Before you play your Happy Days Are Here Again CD, consider this sobering number: $1.8 billion.

     If the state senate bean counters are correct that is the deficit number starring lawmakers and the governor in the face as they go into the not so happy new year.

    In 2009, legislative republicans won the budget cutting game with $1.2 billion in state service cuts and no tax hikes.  The number would have been even higher had it not been for the steady flow of Obama stimulus dollars into state coffers.

    Gov. Jennifer Granholm has her fingers and toes crossed there will be more stimulation next year.

    If not, here's the bad news for the gov. and those who would raise new revenue to take the edge off the budget cutting axe:  While there has been pain from these cuts, no one has died from them.

    And it's unlikely the public is going to storm the state capitol demanding more money be lifted from their pay checks to avert more cuts.

    The loss of the Promise Grant for college kids did not stir anyone except college kids and parents.  Cuts in aid to the cities did not stir anyone except the village, city and county leaders.  The reductions in health care to the needy, didn't stir anyone except the needy.

    The one last bastion of hope for new money are the schools.  Folks will feel the pinch of having to find a way to get their kids to school if the buses stop running. They will object to athletics being halted and maybe they will gripe about adding another ten kids to Junior's already overcrowded 28 person classroom.

    But then again, maybe not.

    The governor is prepared to push for new revenue along with reforms with hopes that her voice will not be the only one demanding that.  She will have some friends in the business community, but then there are the legislative republicans who show no signs of changing their 2009 tune of "No New Revenue" in the New Year.

   That's a CD she does not want to hear.