BATON ROUGE - As House Republicans crafted their version of next year's budget, they built the spending plan off a central premise: Louisiana's income projections are always wrong, and for nearly a decade those missed forecasts have forced repeated cuts across government.

GOP leaders anticipated the projections would be off again - and used 2.5 percent less than the full forecast of what Louisiana is expected to collect in general state tax dollars next year.

House Democrats and Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards say leaving $235 million on the table could force damaging and unnecessary cuts across government for the financial year that begins July 1.

Republicans say the Edwards administration is using scare tactics to describe the impact of stripping out money the governor had proposed to spend next year.