Op-ed by Jon Coupal, from July 2019, includes “During a recent meeting with allied organizations concerned about California’s high taxes, the question on everyone’s mind was: why do our political adversaries continue to push for even more taxes given that the state has a huge budget surplus? … The answer — which they prefer to conceal from the taxpaying public — is that they know that the bill will soon be due for all the accumulated government debt. … A large budget surplus provides a grossly incomplete picture of the fiscal health of a state, city or county.”