State governments across the country are facing troubling economic times.

In Minnesota, much has been made of Governor Tim Pawlenty's use of his power of unallotment to try and balance his state's budget.

California is in even worse shape, Governor Schwartznegger is giving out IOU's instead of refund checks.

The state of Wisconsin faced a 6 point 6 billion dollar deficit this year.

Trevor Roy spoke with Governor Jim Doyle today about the strategy Wisconsin has used in waging their budget battle.

Governor Doyle was in Superior Friday to tour a project made possible by the federal stimulus package.

Governor Doyle recently signed the Wisconsin State Budget for 2009.

"We really did succeed in protecting middle class tax payers everybody thought there was going to be big sales tax increases or middle class tax increases if you're earning less than 300-thousand dollars a year there isn't going to be a tax increase in this budget," Doyle said.

However, this most recent budget does include deep cuts to school districts, shared revenue and state employees.

A fact not lost on Seventy third district representative Nick Milroy

"Well we've asked everybody to share in the sacrifice of the state, we've made the deepest state cuts in the history and town ships and cities are also feeling that with cuts in shared revenue." said Milroy.

The budget eliminated about 2.2 percent of state spending; unfortunately that reduction may come at the expense of state workers.

"State workers are all going to be furloughed, there'll be no pay raises, and we've already rolled back planned pay raises and unfortunately there's going to be a lot of lay offs in state government as well, it's going to be a very very hard budget," said Doyle.

Governor Doyle says the nation needs to change the way it does business to avoid huge budget deficits.

"I think as a country we have to understand we have to have an economy that's based much more on good paying jobs and much less on risky complicated financial transactions," said Doyle.

Governor Doyle is expected to use nearly $3 billion in federal stimulus money to supplement the state budget.