As Gov. Jennifer Granholm is stopped at every turn in her efforts to fight Michigan's budget deficit, it seems any program receiving state funds is fair game.

Next up on the chopping block?

The arts.

On April 18, 200 people showed up at the Capitol Building in Lansing to protest Granholm's executive directive to freeze $7.5 million in grants promised to arts and cultural organizations. The directive comes on the heels of a Senate-proposed $3.6 million cut in arts funding for the year.

The argument the protesters raised at the rally was a valid one: In order to survive, Michigan needs to reinvent its economy, and one way to do that would be through the arts.

The flip side to the argument, however, is that Michigan desperately needs this money — or any money, really — right now, otherwise there won't be much economy to salvage and reinvent down the road.

The sad fact of the matter is that when you're facing a massive fiscal crisis and you're running out of options, cuts need to be made. And while we feel the arts are an essential part of education, the needs of the state outweigh our obligation to the arts.

After all, cultural and artistic groups and programs are likely to find private donors who are willing to keep programs alive. Or, at least, they're more likely to find a rich beneficiary than the state is.

But private donors are not enough, and they are an undependable and unsustainable source of funding.

This financial freeze must be exactly that — a freeze. As soon as Michigan can afford to, that money needs to be immediately returned to groups that need it, and regular funding of the arts must continue.

If this freeze does help the economy, it could be tempting for the legislature to do it again and again, dipping into the well every time the money runs low. But this cannot happen.

The arts, and the programs that support them, are an essential part of the educational experience. If we continually cut funding from the arts, it will cripple or eventually kill art education. And if that happens, a state that already has little to offer its citizens — other than constant economic uncertainty and the threat of poverty — will have even less to offer.

But the real tragedy of this story isn't the freeze or the proposed cuts. It's that all of this could have been avoided.

It's important to bear in mind that had Granholm's plan for a service tax — a tax that would have cost each citizen an additional $69 each year — passed, we would have been able to pull ourselves out of this financial hole with fewer cuts to the state budget.

But because partisan politics and rampant opportunism held sway, instead we get to face the unpleasant prospect of cutting funding for the arts.

But, hey, who needs the arts when you've got an extra $69, right?