Governor Murphy on Tuesday will reveal his final state spending and revenue plan.

The budget address is coming at a time when most residents are being bombarded with rising costs that have added to ongoing affordability concerns.

And as the state stares down a more than $3 billion deficit, saddled with possible cuts in federal aid from the Trump administration.

Progressive activists are calling on the governor to fund more social services amid the upheaval in D.C..

While some Republican lawmakers are threatening lawsuits if Murphy and Democrats use money for so-called pork barrel spending projects, senior political correspondent David Cruz has a preview.

On the eve of Governor Murphy's final budget address.

There's a general sense that this spending plan might be the governor's most challenging.

He's already asked his department heads to trim their spending plans.

Add to that talk of cuts to Medicaid on the federal level.

The end of Covid money.

A structural deficit.

Even a federal shutdown.

This is a worrying budget.

Peter Chen, with new policy perspective, says the administration could be flirting with disaster if it isn't careful with this budget.

This budget, you can you can go into your surplus, right?

But it's not a rainy day yet.

And we're rating the rainy day fund, right?

And as we see at the federal level, there are threats coming, right?

Even a small cut in Medicaid would be, you know, billions lost in funding to the state.

And we can't afford that.

And if we're spending down our surplus instead of saving up more, right, we're not going to have enough to cover the gaps that are left by the chaos in Washington.

NJ Spotlight News budget and finance writer John Wright Myers says this budget season, there are more unknown than there are knowns.

There's a lot of uncertainty swirling around this budget that has nothing to do with, say, the four corners of the budget itself, because things are happening with the economy.

As we see a new administration pursue policies like tariffs on foreign import imports on the mass deportation of part of our workforce.

That all has an impact on economic output and productivity, as well as at the state level.

How much tax revenue is collected?

A lot of this will get more clear as April comes along, and the Treasury sees how much they've collected in taxes.

What Congress does and what the federal administration does is less predictable, which Republicans on the state level say is all the more reason to pull the reins tighter on spending.

But while popular cash give back programs like Anchor and Stay NJ could face some funding pressure.

Critics say that cuts to those programs seem unlikely, with the entire Assembly up for election this fall.

They're not going to cut them off.

Now they still have surplus left to blow.

They're going to do that first, and especially since it's an election year and a big election year for them.

There is no chance that they cut anything of value right now.

And they're going to just bleed down the surplus.

We generally have a problem in new Jersey where the appetite for spending, and this happens under both parties when both political parties are running the government, we have an appetite for spending that outpaces the appetite for, taxes.

And what, the, the, how much courage they have to tax, residents at a level needed to have the things you want, like a fully funded pension system or fully funded schools or transit that works and has a steady funding source and tax relief and health care and more.

All things voters say they like, all of which are funded by one tax or another, which voters say they don't like.

It's the conundrum that makes budget season so frustrating and so critical.

I'm David Cruz, NJ Spotlight News.