“Without any anger, and without any meanness, and without any fear, let’s ask one another in these critical months ahead and years ahead: how much less do we think would be good for our state?” Mr. O’Malley asked. “How much less do we think would be good for our country? How much less education would be good for our children? How many fewer college degrees would make our state or our country more competitive?

“How much less research and development would be good for the innovation economy that we have an obligation and a responsibility, a duty and an imperative, to embrace? How many fewer hungry Maryland kids can we afford to feed? Progress is a choice: we can decide whether to make the tough choices necessary to invest in our shared future and move forward together. Or we can be the first generation of Marylanders to give our children a lesser quality of life with fewer opportunities.”

Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who sought the Republican nomination for president four years ago, said he was persuaded that his state needed to cut its income taxes and taxes on small businesses significantly when he studied data from the Internal Revenue Service that showed that Kansas was losing residents to states with lower taxes.

“My viewpoint, and the viewpoint of the majority of the Legislature, was we’ve got to change our tax policy to attract more people and attract more businesses,” Mr. Brownback said in a telephone interview. “We’re just tired of losing in our league — I consider the surrounding states as our league — and we want to start gaining.”

Mr. Brownback said that he initially had hoped to pay for some of the lost revenues — which are expected to reach a little over $800 million, or 13 percent of general fund revenues, next year — by ending a number of popular tax deductions, and by phasing in the cuts slowly. But he could not find support for that, so, even as other states are beginning to add spending again, he has been looking for savings and more cuts to offset the projected loss in tax revenues. “We are going to be going through everything with a fine-tooth comb,” he said.