A punching bag is a suspended stuffed bag that is punched for exercise. A political punching bag is pummeled during election years by politicians to impress voters.

The health of Hawaii’s state budget is one of the most accessible political punching bags around.

Last week for instance, it was Gov. Neil Abercrombie getting a workout with the state budget punching bag.

Abercrombie hammered away during the debate, sponsored by Hawaii News Now and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, between him and his Democratic primary opponent, state Sen. David Ige.

For a state that has spent years having to repeatedly scrounge up a billion dollars in savings to make things balance, the $200 million shortfall greeting Abercrombie when he took office in 2010 was not really a Herculean challenge.

But, because a key tenet in Abercrombie’s campaign is his handling of the budget, slapping at the state’s finances was in order.

"Yes we are in the black, by $844 million," Abercrombie said at one point in the debate. Earlier, he had calculated the state budget to be in the black "in excess of $500 million." The truth is that politicians always drop the key word when talking about the budget and its surplus or deficit. The word is "projected."

The state does not really have a surplus or a deficit, it projects a surplus or a deficit, based on how much it is expected to collect in taxes and how much it is going to spend for salary, benefits and finance charges.

It is like your own budget. You are projected to pay your monthly mortgage or rent, you are projected to pay for the kids and you are projecting that you will keep your job. If you had to pay off the mortgage or the cost of college immediately, you would be in the red, or bankrupt. The state has the same approach; the only difference is how many mortgages or college tuitions the state decides to assume.

For families, a responsible budget limits how much goes to school, vacation, houses and new cars.

For the state, responsible budget planning speaks to how much you pay employees and how many new programs are started. During last week’s debate, that was the point Ige tried to make.

"The economy is still in good shape, but it is flattening out," he said.

Ige contended that if he and other legislators had approved everything Abercrombie asked for in his budgets, the state would be in serious trouble.

"We cut the budget. We cut more than a billion from the governor’s requests," Ige said during the debate.

State Rep. Sylvia Luke, the House Finance chairwoman, speaking during a seminar on the state budget earlier this year, discounted the idea of an Abercrombie surplus.

She said that the $844 million surplus was mostly already spoken for, because $600 million was already pledged for the new public employee contracts.

The irony is that Abercrombie today is campaigning on a projected surplus, which only appeared because Ige and Luke wouldn’t approve everything in the governor’s budgets.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.