A major dispute between Republicans and Democrats over the state budget is whether it prepares Maine to face its future with less debt and smaller budget gaps or sets the state up to fail and require large tax increases. A document as large as the upcoming budget has enough room to accommodate both views, but the Legislature and the governor’s office would better serve the state if they slowed down and tested each side’s arguments.

The budget put together last fall by the governor’s office and amended this winter by the Legislature is largely sound. Of its $5.7 billion in spending, more than $5 billion would receive little quarrel. The remainder is, of course, a huge amount of money and well worth debating, but lawmakers should keep in mind that most of what they spend their time debating accounts for a small part of total spending.

For Democratic Gov. John Baldacci, the budgetary future looks like a hill to climb – up until the rising level of General Purpose Aid to Education reaches 55 percent of the K-12 spending – then a long downhill coast for Maine to the middle of the states in terms of tax burden. For Republicans frustrated by Democratic budgets and deficits in Washington the climb looks never-ending and, ultimately, exhausting of state resources. They point to rapidly expanding health care services as a general example and an unaccounted for $80 million in federal Medicaid losses in the next biennium specifically.

No one should expect the opposing parties to share a common view of future budgets, but they should, through a committee much like the one that considered LD 1, come to terms over the likely issues Maine will face so that by the time the next supplemental budget arises, lawmakers can anticipate the broad range of challenges.

For instance, the governor makes a good point that the growth of GPA should slow within four years. But legislators saw what happened when districts discovered this time they would be getting less for their local schools, often as a result of falling enrollments and rising property values. To pass an education budget through committee, all districts had to be held harmless. That situation will remain true in four years – communities will demand a higher percentage of their total school budgets come from the state and that will cost more.

While no one knows what the federal government will do with Medicaid, Republicans should recognize that cutting state-funded health care shifts costs to charity care, with health care facilities passing some of those costs to private insurance. Likely, the GOP isn’t trying to increase the cost of private health insurance, so instead of cutting off those eligible, as suggested by some, it needs Democratic help to get federal waivers for co-pays and small premiums for clients well above poverty. Could there be a better time than now to work on this?

The GOP also says it cannot offer good alternatives to the Democratic budget because their opponents control the budget staffs inside state government. If there is something the governor could do quickly, it is to instruct that staff to help Republicans assemble the $200 million or so cuts they would like in the next budget.

That too could be part of a larger committee discussion on tax structure. Given how quickly Democrats have prepared most of the budget, there is plenty of time this spring to work on these important details.