The Joint Finance Committee cut another roughly $30 million from Delaware state government's budget on Tuesday, with lawmakers fretting over cuts to everything from health services to educational programs to foster care assistance.

The cuts were handed down during an occasionally tense meeting in which multiple committee members bemoaned the scale of the cuts.

"There's 12 members of this committee, and I think I can speak for all of us that nobody wants to vote for these kind of cuts," said committee chair Melanie George Smith, D-Bear. "But I think it would be too easy for us to just say 'I can't support this.' If all of us did that, we wouldn't have a balanced budget."

Technically, JFC's budget plan is only a recommendation that the full House and Senate must vote on. But the General Assembly rarely makes major changes to the committee's blueprint.

Few places in Delaware state government have gone unscathed as lawmakers grapple with a $400 million budget gap.

RELATED:See some of the cuts JFC made previously

The Department of Education took the biggest hit Tuesday, losing $15.9 million. The State Board of Education would lose all funding and be shut down.

The board is responsible for opening and closing charter schools and for approving education-related regulations. Legislators said the Department of Education would be asked to find a way to absorb those responsibilities.

BACKGROUND:Read more about the debate over the State Board of Education

Early childhood programs would lose $2 million, the Department would eliminate employees to the tune of $1.5 million, and the state would chop the amount it pays school districts for transportation costs by $3.6 million.

Students would no longer be able to take the PSAT for free in class, and other efforts by the department to get more kids to go to college would also end. Some scholarships would be cut or eliminated.

The Department of Health and Social Services lost $2.3 million, with numerous public health programs taking cuts of 20 percent. A few of those programs include $933,000 from the Infant Mortality Task Force; $260,000 from the Nurse Family Partnership and $46,000 from the state's needle exchange program.

Sen. Nicole Poore, D-New Castle, said she understands JFC has a job to do, but voiced "absolute dismay that we are hurting some of our most vulnerable people."

"I don't care what district you represent, you have people with disabilities, you have people in poverty," Poore said. "I am totally against this."

Some lawmakers and members of Gov. John Carney's administration said the scale of the cuts shows the need for new tax increases or other revenues. Carney's budget director, Mike Jackson, said Tuesday's meeting "shows just how difficult it is to balance the budget with just reductions."

Carney has proposed fixing the state's $400 million budget deficit with an equal mix of spending cuts and revenue increases, including hikes to the corporate franchise tax, personal income tax and tobacco taxes.

But Democratic and Republican lawmakers have only agreed to hike the corporate franchise tax in exchange for repealing the estate tax, which reduces the size of the budget problem by roughly $100 million.

There has been no agreement so far on further new revenues. That means, for now, lawmakers have to cut $300 million instead of the $200 million they would have to cut under Carney's plan.

That puts JFC in an unusual predicament.

In a normal year, JFC would finish writing a fully balanced budget by the end of this week. But some members, like Sen. Harris McDowell, want to wait for more revenues to pass.

McDowell argues it would be problematic to approve a budget that has $300 million worth of cuts, then erase some of those cuts later when new revenue is approved and only $200 million is necessary.

"I don't want to create the unnecessary panic," he said, noting the General Assembly has until June 30 to pass a budget.

But others, including Smith, worry about JFC having to throw together a budget in the closing days of the session.

"There's no question that among the 12 of us, there's probably differences of opinion about how much revenue the state should be asking taxpayers to pay v.s. what should be cut," Smith said. "There are such serious ramifications for not passing a budget. "

The cuts to education and health are only the largest. The Child Placement Review board, which monitors the placement of foster children, would be eliminated. Funding would be eliminated for programs like the Italian/American Commission and Delaware Center for Global Trade and the Hope Commission.

Drug Court would lose money, as would the Department of Agriculture for things like poultry litter transportation and information and education campaigns.

JFC is meeting again Wednesday and Tuesday to consider further cuts. The committee has yet to address Carney's controversial $37 million in cuts to school districts, some of which the governor wants districts to make up with a one-time property tax increase.

It also has yet to decide whether to require state employees to pay more for their health insurance, something both Carney and his predecessor, Gov. Jack Markell, have proposed.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.