Remember the almost comically daunting odds faced by escape artist Harry Houdini in those grainy films and newsreels from the early 1900s? Houdini would slip into a straitjacket and padlocked chains, and then into a casket-sized box, also padlocked, and tossed in the water. It was always high drama.

Tomorrow morning, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty will put on a show that might best be described as a fiscal version of same. Pawlenty will attempt to explain how Minnesota will conform to state law by balancing its general fund budget during the 2010-11 biennium. A plummeting state economy has already generated forecasts of a real-dollar deficit in the neighborhood of $5.5 billion during that time period, and there are credible rumors that next month’s forecast could ratchet that number up to $7 billion in red ink. No matter. With derring-do that would make Houdini proud, Pawlenty will explain how he intends to increase funding for the largest portion of the budgetary pie, K-12 education, while not only spurning state tax increases but proposing cuts to corporate income taxes of more than 50 percent over the next six years.

Like Houdini, Pawlenty is well-versed in the tricks of his trade. There will be fees, delayed payments in promised aid to schools, back-loaded funding