AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Lawmakers’ review of Gov. Paul LePage’s $6.1 billion budget once again drew a crowd of demonstrators, who filled a State House hall Monday to protest proposed cuts in welfare, changes the administration says are due in large part to the end of federal stimulus funding and added MaineCare enrollments.

With chants of “Don’t drop the baton!” a couple of hundred demonstrators under the Maine Can Do Better Coalition banner issued a plea to the Legislature not to weaken a safety net that’s been constructed over the years to protect vulnerable Mainers. Many in the crowd wore red t-shirts of the senior citizen organization AARP, one of about 150 advocacy organizations and service providers concerned about the proposed cuts.

LePage wants to freeze enrollment in MaineCare — the state’s Medicaid program — impose time limits, job search and work requirements for Temporary Aid for Needy Families, eliminate coverage for legal non-citizens for their first five years in America, impose new MaineCare premiums and eliminate Medicare premium assistance for many seniors and disabled people, among other changes.

Commissioner Mary Mayhew of the Department of Health and Human Services told two legislative committees that despite the cuts, the two-year budget calls for $446 million in additional general fund spending for MaineCare, due mainly to the end of federal stimulus funding and a reduction in the federal matching rate. Meanwhile, there’s been a “significant” rise in Medicaid enrollments, Mayhew told the committees on appropriations and human services.

“The proposed cuts to TANF would be extremely harmful to children, throwing these families deeper into poverty and leading some families to become homeless,” said Ellie Goldberg, executive vice president of the Maine Children’s Alliance. “When we are talking about TANF, we are talking about children.”

Marcia Frank of Homeless Voices for Justice said the budget as proposed, especially in general assistance, turns its back on people like herself who lose their jobs and eventually find themselves homeless. With the cutbacks, “over time we’ll see more families losing their homes, more children going hungry, and more Mainers in shelters,” said Frank. “We can’t let this happen.”

Legal immigrants who rely on the state programs as they become ingrained in a new society for help would be harmed by the budget, said El-Fadel Arbab, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came from Darfur, Sudan, in 2004. Work was especially hard to find at first, he told the rally.

“I just kept applying and applying and applying to get a job,” he said. Like other immigrants, said Arbab, “I have worked at jobs and paid taxes while working.”

But also like other immigrants, he gets laid off from time to time and that’s when it’s most important “to stay healthy and keep food on the table.”

Last week, hundreds of people turned out as budget hearings got under way to speak out against proposals affecting pensions for active and retired state workers and teachers.