There are liberals who hate the mention of any of this, especially when conservatives point out how the two states are so much alike in population and demographic mix, and to be sure, there are some non-political factors at play. The liberals vastly overreached, though, with some making a major point earlier this year about how Texas was faced with a budget it couldn't handle and others bemoaning a service deficit.

Texas, with a vastly increasing inflow population that makes it even tougher to deal with employment and governmental growth, has nevertheless been fighting back successfully against budgetary expansion, using some gimmicks but mainly necessary program reductions to keep taxes down to a level instigating entrepreneurship. Services there are hardly in as much jeopardy as in California, whose overcrowded prisons the Supreme Court refuses to tolerate, and nothing helps the poor like jobs. Texas does not shine in public education, but outdoes California in national testing, it's reported.

The Texas example is basically the way America has to go, the way Republicans in the House of Representatives insist we go, and the way too many Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama resist, their clear preference being the California model of spend yourself into misery, soak-the-upper-middle-class and businesses with tax hikes, tie the businesses up with so many regulations they can't compete anymore and offer no remedy but mush and demagoguery on anything truly serious in scope.

It won't work in part because, as a new USA Today report shows, the government's entitlement pledges (mainly to Medicare and Social Security) grew so much last year that they now exceed anticipated revenues by $61.6 trillion, or $534,000 per household. Does anyone actually believe that, even if some tax increases done through reform might help, we can tax our way out of this?