Corbett and his fellow Republicans in Harrisburg, however, have promised not to raise taxes. Absent a radical departure from that campaign pledge, the choices could come down to who in Pennsylvania gets hurt the most.
"There are slim pickings for real easy things to cut this time around," said Sharon Ward, executive director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a liberal-leaning Harrisburg think tank. "There is no low-hanging fruit."
Corbett has been mostly mum on details of how he plans to plug the deficit, projected at anywhere between $4 billion and $5 billion.
He has ticked off a list of cost-cutting measures, such as reducing the state government's car fleet, identifying waste and fraud, and forcing the legislature to give up money it holds in reserve to run its operations in the event of a budget impasse.
But all those changes add up to millions, not billions, in savings.
To reel in big numbers, elected officials and budget experts say, Corbett will have to look at the three areas that make up more than 85 percent of the state's $28 billion-plus budget: education, public welfare, and corrections.
As Ward and others point out, part of the calculation is the check that won't be in the mail from Washington anymore. In June, about $2.6 billion in federal stimulus funding for Pennsylvania runs out.
All this leaves Corbett's administration with few places to turn.
"The biggest expenditures," Ward said, "are education, health care, and public safety. I don't believe that is where we should be doing most of the cutting. But that is where the big money is."
Few expect Corbett, a career prosecutor, to reach deeply into the corrections budget - say, to halt pricey construction of prisons to relieve severe overcrowding.
That leaves education and welfare, and top lawmakers from Corbett's party have been anything but shy in pointing to these as targets.
