Gov. Rick Scott rolled out his first budget proposal this week in Eustis with the tea partiers that brewed up his election. While that was sweet for the governor, when the tea budget got to Tallahassee the reception was iced, and bitter.

Republican legislators said they’d give it a look, but many were openly skeptical and more of them privately perplexed about how this two-year plan would work. It was reminiscent of Gov. Charlie Crist’s last budget, which was roundly dismissed by the Republican Legislature, though Crist was on his way out of the GOP, and Scott just arrived at the party.

But when Scott rolled out his $65.9 billion proposed budget, he turned to the tea party that propelled him into office, not the official party he is a member of, which largely supported his primary opponent.

"This is the budget you asked for," Scott said to applause in Eustis.

The cheers did not come back with him to Tallahassee, where House education, transportation, and health care panels grilled Scott’s budget office staff – and sometimes chastised them – on the governor’s plans for cutting the budget, moving money around, consolidating agencies, and shifting the burden for some services to local governments.

"Do you realize that at the local level there's not going to be any funds for some of the services you say need to be funded at the local level?" Rep. Daniel Davis, R-Jacksonville, asked an administration official. "We need to be honest with ourselves and the local community."

Particularly troublesome to some lawmakers was a $298-per-student cut - and that’s if expected pension savings are put back into education – that Scott budget officials attributed to the loss of federal stimulus dollars. If pension savings aren't realized, or the local governments haven’t saved wisely some of their own federal money, some counties could see a much bigger reduction. The governor’s office says it isn’t proposing to cut education spending, it’s simply not in favor of replacing federal money the state shouldn’t have relied on in the first place. For parents, the result would be the same. Rarely has cutting education been popular with voters.

The proposed cut is “pretty steep," said Rep. Marti Coley, R-Marianna, and chairwoman of the House PreK-12 Education Appropriations Subcommittee. “So we will consider his proposals and we will make our own proposals as well.”

That was a familiar refrain as Scott’s proposal worked the halls of the Capitol building this week.

"How flexible is the governor on this?" Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, who campaigned for Scott last fall as Florida Republican Party chairman, asked Scott’s budget director, Jerry McDaniel.

“You're doing away with 619 jobs to save $2.8 million a year. Are we benefiting from that?” Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, asked of Scott's plan to cut the Corrections Department by $82.4 million. Doing so would eliminate 1,690 jobs and close two prisons, which Scott says would offset an 8,000-bed surplus throughout Florida's prison system.

Rep. Mike Horner, R-Kissimmee, chairman of the House Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Subcommittee, was one of the few lawmakers to not immediately dismiss Scott’s budget as unworkable.

"By investing additional dollars in economic development, by preserving the transportation trust fund, I think (that) shows that he's got an interest in job creation," said Rep. Mike Horner, R-Kissimmee, chairman of the House Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Subcommittee.

Horner was probably happy that overall transportation spending would drop from just under $10 billion this year to $9.3 billion next year and then just under $8.8 billion the next year, a far less steep cut than Scott suggested for other areas of the state budget. He also preserved most of the transportation trust fund, a fate far unlike 124 other trust funds that will be raided or eliminated under Scott’s proposal to the tune of $8.5 billion.

And it wasn’t just in the Legislature where Scott’s “supporters” weren’t fully supportive.