At least one segment of our population would disagree.

Specifically, Pawlenty has proposed eliminating already approved increases in the human services budget that would result in $31.8 million in cuts that will directly affect disabled citizens and older adults — not to mention the employees who care for them.

That fact is this "little here and little there" method of cutting budgets and delaying or eliminating already approved increases has been going on for almost seven years now and the cumulative effect is more than a little.

In response to Pawlenty's plan, House Majority Leader Tony Sertich observed that, "For a lot of this, the devil is in the details." Indeed, a closer look at the details of the governor's proposed cuts to what he has called "welfare health care" can be very revealing.

The sad truth is that to pay for these cuts money is taken out of communities and the pockets of the more than 120,000 men and women across Minnesota who work in our care centers. Indeed, the details are grim:

Funding for care centers is 8 percentage points short of the rate of inflation during the past five years, a fact that contributes to a chronic employee recruitment and retention problem in the industry.

The gap between costs and rates in Minnesota is projected to be almost $25 per resident per day, which ranks fourth worst among the 38 states in a recent study.

Cumulatively, the state has budgeted (but then not spent) more than $47 million since 2002 on wages and investment in our aging care infrastructure.

When the shortfall was announced, DFL Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher said, "We will not take an ax to grandma in the nursing home" and Republican Minority Leader Marty Seifert added, "We can do it without affecting nursing homes and K12 education."

Finally, Republican Senate Minority Leader Dave Senjem (R-Rochester) recently asked this question: "Can the government find 3 percent without affecting nursing homes ...? I think we can do that."

Statements like these from Republican and DFL leaders in the Legislature are encouraging because they obviously recognize that in an environment where by the year 2020 our state will have more seniors than schoolchildren, cutting aging care budgets now is not only insensitive, but is setting us up for an even greater crisis in years to come.

Now, if only the governor would agree.