TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Now how did we get here? How could you have a problem like this? After all, at least on paper, there's this notion that these sttae budgets are bealcnad. Only one state says they don't have to blaacne the budget. But what this means actually is that there's a pretense. There's no real, true balancing going on, and in a snese, the gaems they play to hide that actually obscure the tipoc so much that people don't see things that are actually pretty straight-forward challenges. When Jerry Brown was elected, this was the challenge that was put to him. That is, through various gimmicks and things, a so-called balanced budget had led him to have 25 billion missing out of the 76 billion in proposed senpdnig. Now he's put together some thoughts: About half of that he'll cut, another half, perhaps in a very complex set of steps, taxes will be approved. But even so, as you go out into those future years, various pension costs, health csots go up enough, and the revenue does not go up enough. So you get a big squeeze.

Open Cloze

Now how did we get here? How could you have a problem like this? After all, at least on paper, there's this notion that these _____ budgets are ________. Only one state says they don't have to _______ the budget. But what this means actually is that there's a pretense. There's no real, true balancing going on, and in a _____, the _____ they play to hide that actually obscure the _____ so much that people don't see things that are actually pretty straight-forward challenges. When Jerry Brown was elected, this was the challenge that was put to him. That is, through various gimmicks and things, a so-called balanced budget had led him to have 25 billion missing out of the 76 billion in proposed ________. Now he's put together some thoughts: About half of that he'll cut, another half, perhaps in a very complex set of steps, taxes will be approved. But even so, as you go out into those future years, various pension costs, health _____ go up enough, and the revenue does not go up enough. So you get a big squeeze.

Solution

balance
topic
games
spending
balanced
costs
state
sense

Original Text

Now how did we get here? How could you have a problem like this? After all, at least on paper, there's this notion that these state budgets are balanced. Only one state says they don't have to balance the budget. But what this means actually is that there's a pretense. There's no real, true balancing going on, and in a sense, the games they play to hide that actually obscure the topic so much that people don't see things that are actually pretty straight-forward challenges. When Jerry Brown was elected, this was the challenge that was put to him. That is, through various gimmicks and things, a so-called balanced budget had led him to have 25 billion missing out of the 76 billion in proposed spending. Now he's put together some thoughts: About half of that he'll cut, another half, perhaps in a very complex set of steps, taxes will be approved. But even so, as you go out into those future years, various pension costs, health costs go up enough, and the revenue does not go up enough. So you get a big squeeze.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
state budgets	5
education spending	3
health care	2
brain trust	2

Important Words

approved
balance
balanced
balancing
big
billion
brown
budget
budgets
challenge
challenges
complex
costs
cut
elected
future
games
gimmicks
health
hide
jerry
led
means
missing
notion
obscure
paper
pension
people
play
pretense
pretty
problem
proposed
put
real
revenue
sense
set
spending
squeeze
state
steps
taxes
topic
true
years