Governor Beverly Perdue and state legislative leaders breathed a sigh of relief this week as a procedural vote in the U.S. Senate signaled that the state will soon receive more than $300 million in federal Medicaid funding.

The budget approved by state lawmakers in late June counted on $500 million in new Medicaid money from Washington and outlined a series of budget cuts to make up the difference if the federal funding didn't come through.

The Senate vote is good news, but it's a telling commentary on the state budget woes that elected officials are praising Congress for potentially providing $200 million less than originally expected.

The difference means Perdue will have to tap meager reserve funds and interest accounts and likely reduce Medicaid provider rates, measures that will then be unavailable to lawmakers next year when the budget shortfall could reach $ 4 billion.

The news from Washington and the attention to the state budget problems it brings are also a reminder of the issue that is likely to define the battle for control of the General Assembly this fall.

Almost all Republican legislative candidates are trying to use the state budget problems against their Democratic opponents, claiming the 2009 tax increase was unnecessary and criticizing the decision this year not to set aside money to get ready for next year's shortfall.

Senator Burr used a version of those talking points to explain his procedural vote against the legislation that will provide the Medicaid funding. Burr said the bill "simply delays the hard choices we need to make at the local, state, and federal levels."

Burr must not have been keeping up with the General Assembly in his home state for the last two years. Lawmakers have made several billion dollars in cuts and the General Fund budget passed this summer is 15.9 percent less than the original continuation budget for 2008-2009.

Difficult and often misguided decisions have been made to slash funding for education, human services, and criminal justice programs. Lawmakers did muster the political courage to pass a temporary tax increase last year that limited the cuts to merely devastating some programs, not destroying them.

That tax increase and the $1.3 billion in federal money used this year will expire next June and combined with increased enrollment and inflationary increases will push the budget shortfall above $3 billion.

That number apparently doesn't faze Burr or his Republican counterparts on the state level who continue to say no tax increase was needed and that this year's budget should have been far smaller to prepare for the next one.

But neither Republican legislative candidates nor state GOP Chairman Tom Fetzer ever seem to combine their complaints about taxes and spending levels with any real suggestions about where to find the $3 billion to cut.

Instead they offer up demagoguery about a prison education program or an initiative to provide handheld diagnostic devices in public schools that together don't add up to $50 million if they were eliminated. They sometimes talk about a $25 million pier in Dare County, though the Republicans all voted for that.

There are a few other items that come up in campaign mailings too and let's be overly generous and say that they add up to $250 million, even $500 million, putting aside the wisdom of making the cuts.

That still leaves at least another $2.5 billion to cut. Maybe Burr can offer some suggestions since he seems to want to make the "hard choices." Maybe the candidates for the General Assembly complaining about the budgets passed in the last two years can tell us all where they would find $2.5 billion to cut, which hospital they would close and which teachers they would fire.

Then at least we'd have an honest debate about the budget and where North Carolina was headed. But that's not really the point here, is it?