"Our philosophy would be that anything we can do to pay down the state's debt is (fewer) interest penalty payments we are making and more money that can be invested in real people," Mendoza said. "It's just like managing your home budget, right? Sometimes it makes sense to pay off high debt by taking out a loan, and what that level is you have to borrow is, I think, still to be determined. Do we want to pay off $7 billion or do we want to pay off $11 billion?"