Governor LePage has a problem.

During last fall’s final gubernatorial debate, WMTW’s Paul Merrill asked Mike Michaud not once, not twice, but three times where he’d find the money to fulfill his campaign promises on public school funding.

He could have asked 100 times. Mike wasn’t going to answer.

It was an awful moment for the Michaud campaign because it reinforced existing negative stereotypes about Michaud and allowed his opponents to fill in the blanks with voters’ worst fears.*

(And as painful as it was for Michaud supporters like me, it was a pretty great moment for journalism. Reporters should nail politicians when they can’t answer questions like that.)

But if Gov. LePage had been asked that question about his own plan for eliminating the income tax, it would have been a much, much harder question to answer. Because to meet the voter-mandated obligation to provide 55% of public school funding, Mike only needed to find about $100 million, or 1 percent of the state’s total annual expenditures.**

An income tax repeal will cost 15 times as much.

Of course, Paul Merrill didn’t ask that question, and neither did anyone else. Because Gov. LePage didn’t tell anyone that he was going to eliminate the income tax until after the election. Call it a “December Surprise.”

But tomorrow Gov. LePage’s budget is due. And if he’s really going to eliminate the income tax, he’s going to have to pay for it one way or another.

Now if you’re a voter, you’d be forgiven for thinking that governor will pay for the whole thing by simply cracking down on welfare cheats and illegal immigrants.***

It was the governor’s mantra through the whole campaign: Welfare reform and tax cuts. Welfare reform and tax cuts. It would be hard not to think the two were connected.

And it worked. If you went door to door talking to would-be Democratic voters in October, you know all too well that it worked.

But here’s the rub: Welfare fraud is a crime, and if Gov. LePage could find it, he would prosecute it. Just this week we learned that he spent $52,000 in taxpayer money chasing phantom Medicaid fraud and came up empty.

And those illegal immigrants? Turns out he’s talking about people who came to Maine through a 100% legal refugee resettlement program.

Our absurd immigration laws deny them the ability to work—a problem that could be solved tomorrow if John Boehner would allow a vote on the Senate-passed immigration bill. But in no way shape or form are these people here illegally.

In fact, it’s the governor’s plan to kick them off general assistance that’s illegal — and probably unconstitutional.

So much for that taxpayer windfall.

And so the governor has a problem. People are expecting a tax cut — with no pain for anyone but all those supposedly lazy people on welfare. And that’s not remotely possible.

No one voted for Paul LePage because they don’t want potholes filled or snow plowed. No one voted for him because they want our schools to get worse. And no one voted for him because they want higher property taxes, sales taxes, or excise taxes.

But in some combination or another, that’s what’s coming. And voters won’t be happy.

Which brings us to Republicans in the legislature. See, Gov. LePage never has to face the voters again. So when it’s time for voters to express their outrage, it’s the Republicans in the state house and especially the senate who are going to take the heat. Just like in 2012.

How many of them will walk the plank with him again? And how many will decide that they’d rather not go down with the ship this time around?

The answers to those questions will go a long way to determining the fate of LePage’s second term.

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*In fairness to Candidate Michaud, it might have been even worse for him politically to give a straight answer. Given the 2-against-1 dynamic of the campaign, any firm answer would have become a big fat target for Cutler from the left and LePage from the right. Like so much Monday morning quarterbacking about this election, it’s a hell of a lot easier to say what Michaud did wrong than to say what he should have done instead.

**That’s using some fuzzy LePage math that exaggerates the state’s contribution. To hit 55 percent without any accounting tricks it’s more like $250 million, still a fraction of what LePage’s income tax repeal will cost.

***The governor’s words, not mine.