For the thick-headed among you, let's review. Almost all of the increase in state spending has come from additional federal funding. The only thing that rolling spending back to 2004 levels is that we'll be getting less of our own tax dollars back from Washington. Many of you clearly don't understand the difference between state programs funded with state tax dollars and state programs funded with federal tax dollars. I would think that your representatives in Lansing would. The only conclusion one can reach is that they are stupid or they are deceitful and willing to lie to the voters to get them to believe that state tax revenues have been increasing by billions of dollars per year when the truth is almost all of the new revenue has come from federal sources.

The Republican proposal also deceives people into believing that state spending has been increasing across the board. Again, another lie. In most areas, state funding is less today than it was in 2004. State revenue sharing to local governments has been cut, funding for state parks is non-existent, funding for community colleges and universities is down. The two major areas funded with state dollars that have seen increases are in prisons and schools. We know Republicans love their prisons. The more people in prisons, the better!

Many of the big dollar proposed "savings" are completely arbitrary numbers. $90 million in savings from Medicaid fraud annually? They're going to go after the same crooks every year? Enforcement will never make that number go down? That's a joke.

The rest of the savings focus on making sure the state cuts fall on the back of the poor. Freezing the EIC and increasing co-pays for people on state assistance sound like a good way to kick down people who are already hurting.

Another target is support for college students. Gut the Merit Aid and General Fund support for financial aid. Let's kick out another leg of support from underneath poor students trying to better themselves. And let's not forget the young ones. Another $400 million cut to School Aid for K-12.

The final kicker is that the plan engages in massive amounts of gimmickery to pretend to create savings where none exists. One way is the claim that annualizing the EO 2009-22 can save over $300 million dollars a year. That's just plain fraud on the Republicans part. Most of the savings achieved in the EO were done so by ending programs. Those are one-time savings.

In other areas, the Republicans are double-dipping, claiming savings through the EO where they had already claimed they would cut elsewhere in their proposal like the Merit Award, 21st Century Jobs Fund and even small expenditures like the Commission on Spanish Speaking Affairs that someone noted. Do Lansing Republicans not understand that if you count a cut from the EO, you don't get to count it again by listing it separately?

They also stamped their approval for cuts that those here have howled about like the 2+ million cut in spending for veteran affairs and the 14 million dollar cut in the state police. You didn't see those get mentioned in the list of Republican cuts but they would be included in the annualized EO cuts.