MSU’s year-to-date appropriation for the 2009-10 fiscal year is more than $291.8 million, according to the nonpartisan Senate Fiscal Agency. A 3.1 percent decrease in funding would lower that amount by about $9.1 million, making the total about $282.7 million.

If passed by the House, the legislative bodies likely will have to go into conference committee to reconcile differences.

“We feel it’s just extremely important we fund higher education,” said state Rep. Joan Bauer, D-Lansing, chair of the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee. “We know there’s a link between higher education and both the prosperity of our citizens and the prosperity of our state. … It’s critical to turning our state around.”

Finding the money to fund higher education might stand in the bill’s way of being approved by the House, said state Rep. Bill Caul, R-Mt. Pleasant, a member of the House Appropriations Committee who abstained from voting on the proposal.

“There are certainly things in (the House amendment) that I support and I want to support higher education,” Caul said.

“(The proposal is) taking money from the general fund, which has a $4-5 million hole in it. You can’t withdraw money from an empty checking account, so what we need to do is find out where we’re getting the money.”

The Senate bill, which originally was passed in March, would cut nearly $48 million from public universities across the state, according to a Senate Fiscal Agency analysis.

MSU Trustee Melanie Foster said a decrease in appropriations from the state would be detrimental to the university.

“We only have three sources of revenue: state funding, tuition and fundraising,” said Foster. “That’s it. If you take away one, you have to make it up somewhere else, and you don’t have a whole lot of options.”

Bauer said the House is expected to vote on the bill Thursday.