By sticking to their ideas about cutting taxes while hard-heartedly refusing to put relatively tiny amounts of their record revenues toward services to the sick and disabled, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and leaders of the Legislature have made a decision that is both morally and economically indefensible.

While many on Utah's Capitol Hill have their pet spending projects - some of them quite worthy - the primary debate among those in power was how much to cut taxes. Or, as they prefer, how much money would be "returned to the taxpayers."

But most of the money that passes through government's hands is returned to the taxpayers, not as cash but as schools and highways, prisons and elections.

One way that money is returned to taxpayers who need it most, and who often paid the most tax as a percentage of their income, is Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor.

But legislators again eliminated dental and vision Medicaid services, harming some 65,000 people while saving the state a puny $5 million. They also ponied up only $2.6 million of the $8 million needed to provide basic services to the severely handicapped.

Those were decisions made for one reason - to preserve $160 million in tax cuts that primarily benefit the rich.

Of course, even advocates for the poor liked the part about reducing the regressive state sales tax on groceries from 4.75 percent to 2.75 percent. But the state could eliminate the sales tax on groceries altogether, and on a few other things besides, and the savings realized by a Medicaid-dependent family would not approach the cost of decent health care.

This false economy not only gives up on 3-to-1 federal matching dollars but also condemns those who lack basic dental and vision care to more suffering now and to more expensive procedures later - often at taxpayer expense.

Because a key part of the budget deal, an income tax restructuring that would "return" $70 million to (mostly rich) taxpayers, was not done in the regular session, a special session is planned for the spring. That will be a last chance for the governor and lawmakers to do the right thing about Medicaid and other services for the disabled.

And a chance for us to define what kind of state we are.