Earlier in the debate, Mr. Romney said that bipartisan cooperation with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature allowed him as Massachusetts governor to balance the state’s budget for four straight years and propel the state’s schools to first in the nation on standardized tests. Many experts, however, say those claims are less than fully credible.
Mr. Romney’s assertion that he and the legislature came together to balance Massachusetts’s budget omits the fact that the state constitution requires a balanced budget.
If the Massachusetts legislature had chosen to ignore the constitution, leaving the state budget unresolved as our U. S. Senate has done since 2009, would Mitt Romney have let them slide?