AUGUSTA — Citizen activists taking sides on Gov. Paul LePage’s budget proposals to reduce a $4.3 billion unfunded liability in the state pension system buttonholed legislators in an unusually packed State House on Thursday, while hundreds of demonstrators outside raised the volume of a debate echoing across the country.

A crowd of supporters of the changes, some of whom waved yellow Colonial-era banners that are a familiar prop at tea party gatherings, were welcomed by the Republican governor, who told them the time has come to get the state’s fiscal house in order and “everybody is going to have to share in the pain.”

“Folks, the only one that hasn’t been complaining is those who are paying the bills,” LePage said to cheers of 70 to 100 demonstrators.

Later, roughly 400 demonstrators filled a courtyard outside the governor’s office where they chanted union-solidarity slogans and protested what they see as an unfair burden the budget would place on them.

“Why should retirees foot the bill for state tax breaks for millionaires who call Maine home?” Brenda Kaler, former president of the Maine State Employees Association, asked the crowd. “Maine retired workers want to know.”

Hearings began this week on the governor’s proposed budget, which seeks Maine’s conformity with the federal tax code, a change critics say helps wealthy taxpayers by lowering the state’s top income tax rate and make changes in the estate tax, but LePage says will save taxpayers overall and stimulate investment.

The budget also would freeze cost-of-living increases for state workers’ and teachers’ pensions, reduce the cap on the increases after that from 4 percent to 2 percent; increase the retirement age from 62 to 65 for newer employees, and increase by 2 percent the amount that current employees are required to contribute to the retirement system. LePage has said Maine has 52,529 state workers and teachers who are either retired or are within 10 years of retirement age.

State employees say they collect modest pensions of $19,000 per year and can’t afford any more givebacks.

Jay Calnan of Lewiston, a retired state transportation worker, said he had taken that message to at least two legislators as he lobbied down the hall from the Senate chamber.

“Don’t balance the budget on the backs of state employees,” Calnan said. “They think that this is an instant source of money and it’s not.”

At the opposite end of the hall, Jim Soycek, also of Lewiston, said he was asking lawmakers to help the state by passing the governor’s budget.

“Our state is in a financial mess. I know they have a tough job ahead of them, but we need to start now,” said Soycek, who is unemployed but attends Republican Party as well as tea party events to keep active in politics.

Similar debates have also broken out in other states, notably Ohio and Indiana, where state workers’ collective bargaining rights are on the line, as well as New Jersey.

In Maine, union organizers’ effort to provide bus transportation for many of the demonstrators from across the state drew a barb from the LePage administration.

“They are busing workers into Augusta for protests without mentioning the need to serve the citizens of the state this week,” Brent Littlefield, LePage’s senior political adviser, said in an e-mail urging participation in the counter-rally.

But a union leader, MSEA board member Scott Austin, told the rally that the governor’s proposals threaten to “punch gaping holes in the services people depend on.” While the budget calls for no mass layoffs, it eliminates 81 positions, requiring only a dozen layoffs.

Thursday’s action came under unusually heavy security for Maine’s State House, with law enforcement presence in most locations, but security officials said they saw no confrontations and there were no arrests.

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