Is cutting half the budget possible?

Can you cut $8.3 billion from the budget?

Hunter: “We’re going to do that exercise.”

That’s $8.3 billion from a $33 billion biennial budget, of which about half is for programs that cannot be cut — like debt services (not really a program), education and federal pass-through money. So, about half of the state budget (that’s on the table).

Hunter: “To give you some context, $2.3 billion that our forecast is down today is larger than our total contribution to all six of our four-year institutions, which is about $1.8 billion … one way we could respond to this is just by eliminating those programs. Now, I’m not suggesting that that’s our response, but it gives you some idea” of the magnitude of the shortfall.