Recently, in case you missed it, the North Carolina House of Representatives began playing a game – a game in which you and every other North Carolinian is a player with an enormous stake.

Faced with a worsening state budget predicament the members of the House began crafting a state budget that does not include any tax increases, at least not for now. So far, their budget is not a pretty sight.

Not only would the House make almost all of the draconian cuts already proposed by the Governor and Senate (including closing prisons and increasing class sizes) it would go much, much further. For instance, the House is considering such measures as not allowing eligible families to enroll in the state's children's health insurance program, eliminating dental and podiatry services from the Medicaid health insurance program, laying off thousands of teachers and teachers' assistants, cutting off individuals with disabilities and mental retardation from services that help them stay in their homes and avoid costly stays in institutions, cutting the school year by one to two weeks and reducing teacher pay accordingly and not providing funding for community colleges to keep the doors open to new students. And those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Without additional revenue the budget will have to be cut by roughly 15%. If that were done, state spending per person will fall to its lowest level in real dollars since 1992. That's right: in one fell swoop the House would essentially eradicate almost two decades of progress in dozens of critical areas.

It's clear from the public statements of several House leaders that they are hoping for (and even expecting) a significant public outcry about the severity of their proposed cuts. Lawmakers are counting on the fact that most people do not want to go back to 1992 or at least that they don't want the quality of public services to return to that time – a time in which our schools, community colleges and universities performed much worse, our environment was dirtier and in which dozens of other systems and services that we take now for granted were not even in existence.

Once there is sufficient public outcry, House members can, presumably, claim that they have the public's support to increase taxes. While no one – not even the members themselves – expects them to increase taxes to completely fill the budget gap, it is widely recognized that a little can go a long way in avoiding some of the more damaging spending cuts.

Let's hope they're right about the public outcry because if not they're taking a big gamble.

Undoubtedly House members are already hearing from teachers, state employees, service providers and advocates for vulnerable populations. To what extent they will hear from John Q Public, however, is yet unknown.

In some important ways it may actually be more important for John Q Public to hear from state leaders than vice versa. In addition to listening for public outcry lawmakers themselves need to make it clear that they don't think these deep cuts to state government would be good for our state – that they think there's a better way.

As a practical matter, it may simply be unrealistic to think the "hoping-for-a-public-outcry" game will end the way House leaders expect. My experience is that, for the most part, regular folks who don't happen to be state employees are too busy managing their own lives and dealing with this sour economy to speak out about state budget cuts.

Sure they might hear about teachers being laid off at their kids' school or see a few articles in their local paper or on their local news about some program or service that may be eliminated but that's not always enough to make them take a break from their stressful daily lives to call their local legislator. And while it would be nice if they did so more often – whether about the budget or anything else, it's incumbent upon the state's leaders to do the right thing whether they are called to do so by the masses or not.

The right thing is to do at this point is to raise revenue to avoid these devastating cuts. That's what North Carolina did in the past two recessions. And that's what 16 states have already done during this recession and what 17 more are considering. Let's not be the one state that sets its sights on 1992. Let's take a balanced approach and maintain some of the progress and momentum that we've made since then. And let's do so whether there's public outcry for it or not.

Sometimes real leadership involves more than riding the wave of public opinion. And right now, real leadership is what we need.

Elaine Mejia is the Director of the N.C. Budget and Tax Center