Recognizing the fiscal and political realities of seeing upward of $700 million in unanticipated tax surpluses last year and this year, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has decided to recommend a $60 million tax cut.

Now the one-upmanship game begins.

Already, House GOP leaders are saying the tax cut in 2006 should be more like $100 million.

The majority party's right wing may want even deeper tax cuts.

And as we've seen a number of times in the past 20 years, it's possible a coalition of the GOP governor, moderate legislative Republicans and Democrats will combine in an attempt to rein in the conservatives' tax-cutting stampede.

I recall one year in the mid-1990s when state revenues were growing rapidly, as they are today.

Then-Gov. Mike Leavitt suggested a $30 million tax cut. Within a week or so, legislative Democrats asked for a $60 million tax cut.

Not to be outdone, on the first day of the Legislature that year, Republican representatives and senators broke their routine and recessed for closed caucuses.

And they came out asking for a $90 million tax cut.

Leavitt was in a pickle.

For more than a month — until mid-February revenue forecast updates came in, the governor, who liked to consider himself a fiscal conservative, kept having to defend his skinny $30 million tax cut as the responsible alternative.

As is often the case with a growing economy, however, the new revenue forecasts came in very high.

And Leavitt was able to save face and agree to his legislative party's demand for a $90 million cut.

In the first four months of this fiscal year, already state taxes are coming in around $90 million more than lawmakers budgeted for at the end of the 2005 Legislature last March.

So it is likely come mid-February, Huntsman and legislators will see even more of a surplus this year.

And that would allow the governor and his fellow Republicans to give tax breaks next year higher than the $60 million — an amount Huntsman is expected to call for later today when he releases his recommended 2006-07 state budget.

All may yet be well in conservative, Republican-dominated Utah.

I just hope that at the end of all the tax-cutting/tax-reforming efforts, citizens will see the death of the much-hated sales tax on unprepared food.

From ancient times, when various harsh governments taxed salt, taxes on basic commodities have always been oppressive.

Utah is one of only half a dozen states that taxes food. I've always found it odd that some politicians say this is a good thing.