Education is the biggest expense in the state's budget and erasing next year's deficit will require lawmakers to seriously consider cuts to schools and universities, a fiscal analyst said Tuesday.

Legislators got a look at the reasons the state budget grows and Evan Rodewald, an analyst in the Legislature's Fiscal Research Division, included the difficult truth about education in his report.

Because education programs comprise most of the budget, some portion of future budget reductions will likely come from education.

The briefing was part of a series of updates on the state's budget picture.

How education spending adds up after the jump.

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The legislature's economic wonks, the Fiscal Research Division, gave legislators another gloomy briefing Tuesday on the state's finances but this time focused a little more on the fiscal year that begins in July. And it'll be worse.

Up to now, lawmakers have been focused on how to cover a gap in the current budget of $2 billion, though it could go higher.

Fiscal analysts Barry Boardman and Evan Rodewald outlined how the recession will be deeper and longer than any since the Great Depression, meaning that the next year's budget, for July 2009 through June 2010, likely will have the same $2 billion gap plus as much as another $1 billion in expenses for which there is no money if legislators choose to try and fund them.

Those include an estimated $800 million for the health plan for state employees, $100 million for teacher bonuses, promised $39 million reduction in money siphoned from the highway trust fund and $200 million for enrollment increases at schools, community colleges and universities.