Across the country, states are struggling to balance their budgets and realizing there are no perfect solutions. This is not the first budget challenge that Maine has faced, and it will likely not be the last.

But, despite these challenges, we can all be proud to live in a state where for many years our state spending has reflected the values that our residents place on caring for one another.

While no one would claim that this recent budget is an ideal document, it is a responsible one, created in the midst of very difficult choices. It pays for the promised property tax relief and increased state support for education while maintaining our fundamental commitment to protect Maine’s low-income children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

When lawmakers arrived in Augusta in January, their first order of business was to vote on a bill that kept their promise to provide significant property tax relief by increasing the state’s financial commitment to local schools and expanding a popular tax relief program.

This bill passed with a broad, bipartisan vote. It was the right thing to do, but it added $250 million to a $750 million budget shortfall. It was in this context that Gov. Baldacci presented his budget proposal. And, for the last three months, the Appropriations Committee – and every other legislative committee – has been holding public hearings, debating and making tough decisions about this proposal.

The budget that now awaits the Legislature’s final vote cuts many millions of dollars from the services that Maine people are getting right now. It includes $16 million of cuts in MaineCare (Medicaid), $13.9 million in mental health and mental retardation programs, $6 million to child welfare services and others in virtually every other area of state government.

To make up the remaining shortfall, the Appropriations Committee appointed a bipartisan subcommittee that came up with an alternative method of borrowing money through “revenue bonds” sold by the Municipal Bond Bank. Along with filling the shortfall, this borrowing proposal will also enable the state to repay money that is owed to the Maine State Retirement System and therefore would save money for the state in the long-term.

But, there were some cuts in the governor’s proposal that went too far. The current budget proposal restores one-third of the cuts to services provided to Maine’s most vulnerable citizens, including our MaineCare program.

MaineCare, Maine’s Medicaid program, provides a health-care safety net to low-income children and their families, seniors and people with disabilities who would otherwise be at the mercy of a health-care system that is increasingly unaffordable. The health-care crisis that we all face has many causes – fewer people are covered by employer plans, skyrocketing premiums and individual premiums that are out of the reach of many.

In Maine, one very valuable part of the solution to this crisis has been our MaineCare program. This program has contributed to the dramatic drop in the number of uninsured in the state in the last decade.

Two-thirds of the expenditures in the MaineCare go to provide care for people age 65 and older and people with disabilities. When MaineCare steps in to provide health insurance coverage, it prevents these costs from being shifted to everyone else who pays for health care in Maine. It also helps essential community health care providers like hospitals, nursing homes and mental health centers stay in business.

Seventy-five percent of the care in Maine’s nursing homes is provided through MaineCare.

We can all agree that something must be done about the high cost of health care. But taking people’s health care away – as will certainly be the case if the majority budget is not passed – is certainly not the answer.

It is easy to criticize a proposal to borrow against future revenues to cover current program costs. But the alternatives are slim.

Those who argue to cut even more state services have had months to explain how they would do it and which ones they would cut. Now they argue that they can do it without substantial harm, but they need another three months to figure out how. But what are the real choices?

For $200 million, we could, for example, eliminate the University of Maine and community college system. Or we could eliminate the departments of Conservation, Inland Fisheries, Labor, Public Safety, Economic and Community Development, Agriculture, Marine Protection, Defense, Secretary of State and executive, and still be $20 million short.

Or we could eliminate some of the MaineCare services that every day makes it possible for one of our neighbors, friends or family members get chemotherapy, end-of-life care in a nursing home, prenatal care at a rural health center or mental health treatment that allows them to live in the community and stay employed.

Or we could raise additional revenues.

None of these choices are easy.

At the end of the day, the fact is that as uncomfortable as the borrowing plan may be, it saves the state money in the long run. It avoids more cuts, which would indeed be painfully debilitating to the state and our neighbors who live here. And the best alternative of raising state taxes to cover the property tax relief this budget contains simply does not have the votes necessary for passage.

The Rev. Fred Pease is a member of the Economic and Social Justice Committee of the Maine Council of Churches.