With the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Tuesday passing a GOP-crafted $31.5 billion budget proposal and kick-starting budget negotiations months earlier than in previous years, the state’s budget negotiations have started in earnest.

House members representing Butler County said Tuesday that they stood behind the Republican spending plan, which eschewed new taxes and borrowing and expanded on spending cuts proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf earlier this year.

Wolf’s budget proposal set spending at $32.3 billion for the 2017-18 fiscal year. That plan included a $1 billion tax package that would impose a severance tax on Marcellus Shale drilling operations, a proposal to use a lease back agreement for the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex to secure a $200 million upfront payment, and a per-resident fee on municipalities that receive full-time coverage from Pennsylvania State Police.

Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-60th, pushed back against critics of the proposal, who have said the plan goes too far.

“At $31.52 billion we’re meeting our obligations, that’s it,” said Pyle, who is a member of the House Appropriations committee, which advanced the spending plan Monday on a 22-15 party-line vote.

He said any plan that includes tax increases was a non-starter for Republicans.

“We’re not raising taxes. We absolutely won’t even consider it,” Pyle said.

GOP leaders in the House have a 121-81 majority in the chamber, and passed the proposal Tuesday in a 114-84 vote, with several Republicans defecting. The proposed budget now heads to the state Senate, where it is likely to be revised and ultimately sent back to the House for another vote. The state’s new fiscal year begins July 1.

Rep. Jim Marshall, R-14th, called the House proposal “a bare-bones budget” that reflected the reality of the state’s fiscal woes.

According to House Democrats, tax collections for March came in nearly $230 million under projections. The state also faces a projected $3 billion structural budget deficit going forward. The Republican plan relies on spending cuts and a gambling expansion to help fill that fiscal hole.

“We’re in the position where the revenue really just can’t be spread any thinner,” Marshall said.

Pyle called Democratic opposition to the plan politically untenable given that the GOP-crafted plan expands on proposals initiated by Wolf in his February budget address.

“I think that (criticism) is going to make trouble for them down the road, because this is actually Wolf’s budget,” Pyle said. “We tweaked a couple numbers, but we maintained the pillars of his budget. We’re a billion less, but we’re right in line.”

The governor’s budget proposal contained cuts to government spending and proposed mergers to some of the largest state-run agencies. But Republicans on Monday went even further, proposing $815 million in additional spending cuts. The GOP plan contains proposed increases to K-12 education and special education, but smaller increases to early childhood education and anti-opioid efforts than the governor proposed in February.

“The No. 1 driving factor is, how are we going to effectively put ourselves in a situation where we are controlling spending,” Rep. Brian Ellis, R-11th, said. “With a deficit situation, as difficult as it may be you have to look at streamlining government and cutting services.”

In February Wolf called his proposed cuts and agency mergers a “historic” rollback of Harrisburg’s bureaucracy, and Rep. R. Lee James, R-64th, pointed out that the House proposal leaves most of those ideas intact. He called the House proposal “perfectly imperfect.”

“It does it’s very best to distribute whatever pain there is to be had across the board,” James said. “That probably makes it a good bill. If everybody is unhappy with it, it’s probably a good bill.”

Still, James acknowledged that he had hoped the state could do more to increase funding to its system of 14 college and universities, which is currently in the midst of a self-imposed study to determine whether cuts or consolidations are needed to increase its viability.

Rep. Aaron Bernstine, R-10th, who is going through his first state budget negotiation after being elected in November, brushed aside the idea that the proposed cuts would result in political blowback for Republicans.

“I’m not worried about popularity. I’m worried about solving the spending problem we have in Harrisburg,” Bernstine said. “This is a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”

That’s a position echoed by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-12th, who, shortly after the House proposal passed a floor vote Tuesday afternoon, said he would have cut spending even further. Still, Metcalfe said he supported the House proposal and hoped the Senate Republicans would use their veto-proof majority to overcome any opposition to the spending plan.

“I’m hopeful that the Senate will show the courage that’s needed to rein in some of the excessive spending,” said Metcalfe.

Rep. Tedd Nesbit, R-8th, called the proposal a realistic spending plan for a state that’s seen lagging revenue collections and persistent disagreement among elected officials over issues like the corporate tax rate, taxes on the natural gas drilling industry, funding for human services and, most recently, whether municipalities that receive full-time coverage from state police should be required to pay an additional fee for the service.

“It’s far from perfect, but I think it addresses all the necessities,” he said. “We are going to have to make some hard decisions, because we can’t afford to fund everything at the level that will make everyone happy.”