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of cuts that balanced the budget. It was a bold move, especially considering that the man he succeeded and served under as lieutenant governor, Mike Rounds, had only weeks earlier proposed a milder set of cuts and the use of reserves to balance the budget.
• Recently, we learned the state ended its most recent budget year in June with a $47.8 million surplus. That's a swing of $175 million from the shortfall of just two years ago.
• It's a remarkable achievement (for which Daugaard admittedly had some help from the state's economy). Few elected officials are willing or able to have such an immediate and positive impact in fiscal matters. In an era of widespread worry about

government spending, Daugaard's leadership is an example for others to follow.
• Of course, a surplus creates its own set of problems.
• Immediately upon hearing the news about the surplus, Daugaard's adversaries in the Democratic Party began trying to spend it.
• House Democratic Leader Bernie Hunhoff, of Yankton, didn't mince words.
• "It's time the governor's staff invest in communities across South Dakota instead of hoarding our tax dollars in Pierre," Hunhoff said in a written statement.
• My, how times change. Just two years ago, the Democratic candidate for governor, Scott Heidepriem, was telling anyone who would listen that the state faced a budget "crisis," and that Daugaard wasn't sufficiently concerned about it. Now Democrats are accusing Daugaard, who cut many millions from the state budget, of "hoarding.
• The Democrats are playing politics, pure and simple, but there is a valid point buried within the rhetoric. That point is about surpluses, and the state's responsibility to spend and invest them wisely.
• So far, the extra money has been stashed in a reserve fund. We'll have to wait until December to hear Daugaard's next budget speech, and we suppose he and legislators will have plenty to say then.
• Meanwhile, we should take a moment to appreciate what has transpired. When Daugaard proposed his drastic cuts two years ago, he envisioned a future in which budget deficits would no longer be an annual discussion topic.
• That future has arrived, and the problems of surpluses certainly seem preferable to the problems of deficits.
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