Cuts? What cuts?

With its Tuesday night agreement on higher education spending, the Legislature has finalized the framework of the 2009-11 general fund -- and there's no way anyone can use the word "cut" to describe it.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, said months of hearings on funding priorities for public schools, the state justice system, welfare programs, colleges and universities and public employee salaries and benefits have resulted in approved spending "just south of $7 billion."

You'd think that figure represented fiscal Armageddon, given the propensity of progressives to toss around phrases such as "Draconian cuts," "falling behind" and "Third World status." Anyone who claims as much now is enabling the biggest lie of the legislative session.

We'll say it again: There will be no cuts in the 2009-11 budget -- only more spending increases.

It's so simple even a liberal blogger can understand it.

The Legislature passed a $5.9 billion, two-year budget in 2005. Lawmakers passed a $6.8 billion budget in 2007, but revenue shortfalls caused by the recession forced lawmakers to modify those spending increases. When the current biennium ends June 30, the state will have spent between $6.2 billion and $6.3 billion on general fund programs, about 7 percent more than the budget before.

If Sen. Horsford's math is correct, and the Legislature ends up passing a $6.9 billion budget for 2009-11, state spending will increase 10 percent over current levels. That's right: State government will grow by double digits under the new budget when compared with the current, modified one -- the one that's 7 percent bigger than the one before.

But those facts won't get in the way of the nonsense that continues to come out of Carson City. You'll still hear and read the word "cut" a few hundred times before lawmakers adjourn in early June.

Those "cuts" will represent imaginary reductions from one of two bogus figures: the huge funding increases authorized in the 2007 budget that were never met because of the revenue shortfalls, and the pie-in-the-sky, what-we-wish-we-could-spend amounts most agencies requested for 2009-11 but knew they had no chance of getting.

Thus, anyone who claims the general fund should be about $8 billion to "maintain current services" (whatever that means) can say the budget reflects across-the-board cuts of 12 to 13 percent. Still a bit foggy on the math? Imagine a 10-year-old asking for a 50 percent increase in his allowance, but upon getting only a 10 percent boost, crying that his pay had been cut 40 percent.

But budgeting $6.9 billion for the general fund and coming up with the money are two different things. The Economic Forum, the nonpartisan panel that provides binding revenue forecasts to the Legislature, says the state's current tax structure will generate $5.5 billion over the next two years.

That means Sen. Horsford and his colleagues must come up with nearly $1.5 billion in tax increases and federal "stimulus" funding to balance the budget. The figure would make the record tax hikes of 2003, which totaled more than $830 million, seem like an inflationary adjustment.

If the public can be tricked into thinking that state government is being drastically cut back, even with a 10-figure tax hike, they'll be more likely to support the, ahem, "revenue enhancements."

But if they're made wise to the fact that state government will continue growing at a healthy clip when household budgets, businesses and the economy as a whole are contracting -- if they feel like they're being tricked -- they might say no.

Which is exactly why you'll hear about nothing but "cuts, cuts, cuts."