Gov. Mark Dayton delivered an impassioned defense of his plan to fix the state’s tattered finances Thursday, coupling it with a blistering denunciation of the Republicans who control the Legislature.

“Everything that’s being debated and considered and decided now, as extreme as it is, as drastic as it is, as cruel as it is, as draconian as it is, it has effects on real people’s lives,” he said. “And that’s the point I keep trying to make over and over … We’re talking up there about dollars and cents. But we’re talking about people’s lives. Every one of those dollars that’s called spending in a pejorative way is a dollar that goes to help a real person here in Minnesota.”

Dayton’s full-throated speech was delivered to about 500 officials of cities, counties, townships and school districts who planned to cap their annual conference by heading from downtown St. Paul to the state Capitol Thursday afternoon to plead their case with legislators. “I know,” he acknowledged, “I’m preaching to the choir here.”

He stressed his longstanding contention that the Republicans’ plan to patch Minnesota’s $5 billion budget deficit by cutting spending without raising taxes will particularly devastate local government operations, but he repeatedly returned to the effect he said it will have on all Minnesotans’ lives.

“Every one of those dollars that is cut takes away something that means something to someone’s life,” he said. “These decisions are not just about dollars and cents, they’re about our values and priorities, our values as people individually and our collective values as a society.”

As for Republicans’ flat refusal to consider his plan to raise income taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans, “all of these draconian measures that are being considered or enacted now are being driven, at least by the majority view, that we cannot raise taxes one dollar on the wealthiest people in the state,” Dayton said. “That priority, protecting the richest people in Minnesota, the highest income earners, the top 5 percent, to pay one dollar more matters more than everyone else paying higher property taxes.”

It also “matters more” to Republican legislative leaders than police and fire departments, public libraries, school integration, special education, public transit, higher education tuition or health care for the elderly, he said. “It’s just a sheer denial of reality” that amounts to “social and economic Darwinism,” Dayton said.

The impact on Minnesotans of spending cuts will be “terribly, terribly unfair,” Dayton said. “The consequences of these actions will be draconian. In some cases barbaric.”

Dayton dismissed Republicans’ contention that the wealthiest Minnesotans will flee the state if their taxes go up. “I think wealthy Minnesotans are better than that,” he said. “No one likes to pay taxes. I recognize that… I don’t raise anybody’s taxes [to get] any kind of satisfaction. I look at it as a necessity for Minnesota.”

He also accused Republicans of riding roughshod over commissioners and department heads facing drastic budget cuts without being given the opportunity to make their case for state spending.

Their expertise is “just being discarded, they’re not being listened to. I have commissioners in agencies that are going to be cut by a third or a half or, in the case of Human Rights by 63 percent, who are being given three minutes to testify, three minutes to explain…I’ve never seen in my public career anyone treated that way.”

All of that said, Dayton said he remains willing to compromise with the Republican leadership. “They’ll be here, and I’ll be here,” he said of the point when budget bills take their final form. “The two sides [will be] some distance apart and need to meet somewhere in the middle. I’m prepared to move toward the middle.”