For a couple of otherwise pretty smart fellas, the two major-party candidates for U.S. Senate seem to be playing right into the other's hands these days.

I'm going to tell you right up front that this is a column about the state budget and involves a little math.

Wait! Don't move on to the next story. I know this can get a bit tedious. But the math is easy, and the story itself tells us a lot about how this state is being governed.

I decided to write about this when Governor Pat Quinn appeared on public television's Chicago Tonight show last week and was grilled hard by hosts Phil Ponce and Carol Marin.

The governor did his best to deflect some tough questions about his budget and other topics. (Many of the questions seemed to come right from one of my previous columns, by the way.)

One thing the interviewers returned to again and again was how Quinn's proposed budget cuts over a billion dollars from education spending. The governor wants to stop those cuts with a one-percentage-point income-tax surcharge. Quinn has warned that without a tax hike, the schools will suffer. Thousands of teacher layoffs will result. Kids will be put into ever-more-crowded classrooms.

The Statehouse is buzzing yet again with talk of a new gaming expansion plan. This time, the players say, they have their acts together. Really.

I'm always pretty skeptical of these big legislative pushes. Expanding gaming is one of the most difficult things to do. A big reason is that there's so much money involved with gaming that people get too greedy. Eventually, the bill suffocates under its own weight. Too many goodies are added to the Christmas tree.

The only time this ever works is when all the legislative leaders and the governor are pulling together. That's how gaming was expanded under Governor George Ryan and that's how video poker was legalized last year under Governor Pat Quinn. Everybody at the top, Democrat and Republican, worked together to get it done.

Decisions made by a governor in a far-away but strikingly similar state might actually influence our election right here in Illinois.

Just a week or so after Governor Pat Quinn lays out his state budget blueprint next month, recently elected New Jersey governor Chris Christie will do the same.

Illinois and New Jersey have more in common than you might think. They're not exactly alike by any means, but they're both Democratic-leaning states that have elected Republican governors in the past. They both have unemployment troubles, although New Jersey is better off than us right now, and they both have horrible state-budget problems.

Illinois' budget crisis is somewhat worse than New Jersey's, but they're similar enough that the two governors' budget plans will undoubtedly be compared. Illinois' budget deficit for next fiscal year, which starts in July, is projected at somewhere around $13 billion. New Jersey's upcoming red-ink total will be about $11 billion. The two states' operating budgets are about the same size.