Well, now.

That old fortune teller was far off on that guess.

California didn't do so bad as that person thought.

That's a big problem with basing your argument on someone else's guess, 

(when it went wrong, you should probably revise your argument)

California today is looking at a 4 billion dollar deficit on into 2020.

A by the way, you can't interchange debt with deficit, they aren't the same thing.