"We felt the governor's budget did a good job of balancing the need for meaningful tax reform along with ever-increasing needs in education, transportation and state employee compensation," said Mike Mower, the governor's deputy chief of staff and spokesman. "We're comfortable with the position we've drawn. We recognize the legislative process entails give and take on both sides."

Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, was caught off guard by the amount of money the House wants to cut. Senate Republicans won't caucus until Tuesday, so Valentine said he didn't know what their reaction would be.

But he said no one has had a chance to look at the overall budget yet "to see if $230 million makes sense or is completely out of line. . . . I'm not going to say no, but at the same time, I have to express caution."

Valentine has repeatedly said he's concerned the growth in state revenues can't be trusted to continue, at least not at the same levels. Some of the sources of revenue, he said, are just too volatile.

Everyone needs to keep in mind, the Senate leader said, that "it's possible to have a big tax cut this year and a big tax increase next year."

House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, expressed similar concerns about the lack of details in the House proposal. Most importantly, he worried it would come at the expense of education, since House leaders did very little to reduce transportation spending.

"Based on what we know about the budget, that seems to be a large tax cut if we're still putting the same amounts into transportation, buildings and education" as Huntsman proposed, Becker said. "It concerns me to hear about it without specifics, because if it were at the expense of education, that would be a big problem for us."

Not all House Republicans were supportive of the proposal, either. Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, one of the founders of the "mainstream caucus" within the House, said it may be too much, too soon.

"I'm concerned that this is too dramatic of a tax cut," Allen said. "I've been around long enough to remember when the (Utah) economy fell off a cliff and (tax) revenues dropped suddenly and sharply."

In fact, in the early 2000s, the Legislature and then-Gov. Mike Leavitt were able to avoid employee layoffs and/or tax hikes even though they had to make up for the loss of around $700 million over two years. They did it by draining the state's Rainy Day surplus account and pulling general fund tax dollars from road projects.

Rep. Dave Cox, R-Lehi, another GOP moderate, said he doesn't consider it growing government to give decent pay raises to state employees, teachers and college employees.

All 75 House members and half the 29-member Senate will be up for re-election in 2006. And politics was clearly discussed in the House's closed caucus, especially among those who fear the generally more conservative Republican delegates will punish them for what they characterize as excessive government growth.

"But if you are not growing programs or hiring more people — just dealing with more students to educate and/or more roads to build, then people shouldn't get so upset" as the state spends more, Cox said.

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