Madison - Gov. Scott Walker's administration has touted for months its efforts to balance the state budget, but now it also has acknowledged a significant way in which the budget isn't balanced.

To keep the possibility alive of making further cuts to state health programs, the Walker administration quietly certified to the federal government on Dec. 29 that the state had a deficit.

Federal law allows the state to drop tens of thousands of adults to save money on health care costs if the state can show it has a deficit. Walker has said he wants to cut health care spending in other ways, but hasn't ruled out dropping those 53,000 adults if the other methods aren't approved by the federal government.

To keep that option alive, state Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch wrote in a December letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that the state would have an undisclosed deficit from Jan. 1 of this year through June 30, 2013.

"It's nothing more than what we've been saying all along," Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said.

How can the Walker administration say that the 2011-'13 state budget is both balanced and in deficit?

In June, Walker and Republican lawmakers passed a balanced budget according to the measure that is always used for state budgets - cash accounting. That means essentially that the state will have cash left in its main account - an estimated balance of $68 million - when the budget ends on June 30, 2013.

That's the measure that state officials use for budgets and the one Walker has repeatedly touted in statements when he says he eliminated a $3 billion budget deficit on a cash accounting basis.

But the state's accounting method falls well short of those used by publicly traded companies. Those "generally accepted accounting principles" count not just whether the state has cash on hand but also whether it has made promises to pay money that it can't back out on.