House caucus says schools should get school surplus

It's amazing how fast $1 billion can disappear.

In a sometimes disjointed debate Thursday, the 56 members of the House GOP caucus argued about the current year's budget surplus and the anticipated surplus next year.

Senate Republicans, too, pored over pages of proposed budget items during their closed-door caucus that add up to millions more than they have to spend — and that's with a significantly smaller tax cut than that recommended by their House counterparts.

In fact, Senate leaders warned, the $230 million tax cut pledged by the House would put lawmakers nearly $40 million in the red, even before they start looking at the $221 million in priorities set by the 10 budget subcommittees. The Senate majority said they can deliver that $100 million they've promised, but that leaves just about $92 million to tackle the priority list.

And Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. may be taking another look at everything he said his $9.6 billion budget could do. In his State of the State address last month, Huntsman said it was time to take the sales tax off food — a hefty $100 million addition to the $60 million in tax cuts already in his budget.

"We're still optimistic we'll be able to achieve some significant tax reform," the governor's deputy chief of staff, Mike Mower, said. "We're anxiously awaiting the new revenue projections that will be released early next week."

The governor is considering what he'll leave out of his budget if less money turns up in the final revenue projections than he initially anticipated, a source said.

But Mower said that whatever the new numbers are, "we'll be able to clearly show how the governor's budget priorities can be addressed."

While the House, too, appears to be waiting for a financial boost from the new revenue estimates, Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, the co-chairman of the powerful Executive Appropriations Committee, just shakes his head. "I can guarantee you that won't solve any problems," he said.

In the House, the heart of the debate for conservatives is how to slow government growth.

But as legislators look at the so-called "building blocks" suggested by the budget subcommittees, and the large needs of road-building and water development, the $1 billion legislators have between one-time surpluses this year and anticipated new revenue growth next year runs like water into a desert.

Two things became clear in the House caucus debate: