Does it stretch back to January, when 62 percent of you told a Tribune pollster you wanted all or most of a projected $1 billion state budget surplus to go to public schools?

At the end of the 2006 legislative session, lawmakers boosted the public education budget by an overall 9.8 percent. But then they also hiked transportation funding by nearly twice that amount. Just to remind you - that memory thing again - in the same poll, only 8.5 percent of Utahns wanted more money for roads.

Meanwhile, the letters and e-mails flowed into this newspaper and other media throughout that session. Again and again you said it: Give the money to schools.

Instead, the Legislature gave the average Utahn about $40 in tax relief.

Remember that other little nasty go-round earlier this year? The one that pitted the governor against the Legislature, with the Republican majority refusing to scrape together a paltry $2 million for emergency dental and vision care for Utah's neediest disabled people? The money came through in the end, but only after wealthy benefactor James L. Sorenson matched public donations with $1 million of his own money.

That was some bake sale.

We're back at the budgeting game again. And next year, there's no reason for bowing and scraping to pay for the programs Utahns want. On Tuesday, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. presented Utahns with a holiday gift - a fat budget proposal of $10.7 billion that includes a projected surplus of $1.6 billion.

This is because, as Huntsman gleefully noted on Tuesday, "unemployment is precariously low and job growth is exceedingly high."

It's raining dollar bills, people. We're flush. We have more than 1,000 engineering jobs going unfilled right now in the state.

They're begging for oil workers in the Uinta Basin. Heck, they're begging for workers in nearly every corner of the state.

Not to start the budget debate on a downer, but the Legislature does have a reputation of playing Grinch to Huntsman's Cindy Lou Who. Lawmakers have already started warning that everyone has a pet program to pay for, and they can't fund everything.

They have been huddling in caucus and are talking of tripling the $100 million tax cut Huntsman wants.

Remember what you asked for, people.

The guv is pushing a 7 percent increase in the per-pupil spending and a $1,000 one-time bonus for all teachers. He's back with a request for optional all-day kindergarten, supported by reams of research that shows the program helps keep poor and minority children from falling behind.

Another memory exercise: Last year, House Republicans on the Public Education Committee led the fight against all-day K. The debate quickly became a culturally charged discussion of "state-funded day care." Orem Republican Margaret Dayton (to join the state Senate in January) lamented that working parents would simply shove their children off onto the schools, somehow shirking their domestic responsibilities.

There are a few new faces, but this is essentially the same elected body you'll hear pontificating again about how Utah students must be groomed to compete in a big, competitive world.

All-day K - again, completely voluntary - is worth a try.

Finally, Huntsman says $3 million is enough to permanently restore vision and dental care for all Medicaid recipients. He says he's committed.

The money is there. Is the Legislature's compassion?

Near the end of his presentation, Huntsman tossed out a cliche, albeit a good one. "Politics," he said, "is the art of the possible."

We have the money to pay for possibility. Remind your legislator.

hmullen@sltrib.com