BOSTON (AP) - What gets cut if Question One passes?

It's the one question backers of the initiative to end the Massachusetts income tax have struggled to answer in detail.

Carla Howell, chairwoman of the Committee for Small Government, insists state government is so bloated with waste and overspending that eliminating $12.5 billion a year - about 40 percent of state revenues - can be easily accomplished.

Pressed for a list of what should go, Howell at first pointed to a handful of relatively smaller changes. Those include canceling the state's "billion dollar pharmaceutical handout" - referring to Gov. Deval Patrick's $1 billion life sciences initiative. The plan is spread out over 10 years, so annuals savings would fall far short of $1 billion.

She would also eliminate tax breaks for the film industry for a savings of between $100 and $150 million a year and push a series of reform measures from lowering wages of toll takers on the Massachusetts Turnpike to repealing the "Quinn Bill" which gives raises to police officers with colleges degrees.

Howell's biggest target are state pensions. She said Massachusetts could save $6 billion a year by bringing pensions for state workers in line with the private sector - a number critics say is simply pulled from the air.

Coming up with cuts would be easier if the state published a list of how it spends each dollar, Howell said. The budget available online, she said, is too broad.

"The day they put a detailed operating budget on a web site for all taxpayers to see is the day they will announce billions of dollars of cuts because the embarrassment of transparency will force them too," Howell said.

Critics say the notion that the state could easily cut $12.5 billion a year is pure fiction. They say if the state fired every public employee - every state police officer, state and community college professor, social worker, prison guard and judge - it would fall $7 billion short of the $12.5 billion goal.

"It's absurd," said Michael Widmer of the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. "We're in the middle of a fiscal crisis now. This is a one or two billion dollar problem we're facing and she's saying cut $12.5 billion."

Part of the fight is over numbers. Howell points to a figure of total state spending of $47 billion, and says cutting $12.5 billion from that shouldn't be so hard.

But opponents said that is an inflated figure. They say it includes $4.7 billion in Lottery spending, which also includes the $3.2 billion in prizes distributed to winners. Cut out the prizes and the Lottery disappears, they say, pointing to what they say is a more accurate figure of just under $32 billion in total state spending.

Widmer also says there are large portions of the budget the state is legally required to fund. Deduct those and the cuts to the remaining parts of the budget climb toward 70 percent.

He said the claim of a $6 billion in potential savings from state pensions is "pulled from the air" and that the annual state contribution to the pension fund is $1.4 billion.

Even Beacon Hill Republicans, who have long pushed for lower taxes, say eliminating the income tax is irresponsible.

"Fire every single state employee, every last one, and you're still not there," said House Republican Leader Brad Jones of North of North Reading. "Everyone in jail, let them out, because there are no jails."

At the core of the debate is the definition of wasteful government spending.

For Howell, the definition appears rooted in her libertarian political philosophy, which emphasizes personal freedoms and an extremely limited role for government.

As a candidate for US Senate in 2000, Howell opposed any limits on gun ownership, said the US Department of Education should be abolished, called for the end of the federal income tax and said the US military should only be used to defend American soil.

Howell's Committee For Small Government Web site criticizes government initiatives like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the federal "war on drugs," and mandatory criminal sentences. It argues that welfare programs create "a culture of irresponsibility and dependency" and should be replaced by private charities.

Then there's the one final statistic.

On its web site, in interviews and in its 150-word argument in favor of the ballot initiative in the official state voter guide, the group repeatedly points to a figure of 41 percent in wasted government spending in Massachusetts.

The number refers to an April 2008 opinion poll released by the anti-tax group Citizens for Limited Taxation asking Massachusetts residents to guess at the percentage of each dollar the state wastes.

Howell's group acknowledges that the number is just an opinion, but defends using it, saying it reflects people's view of state spending.

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On the Net:

Committee For Small Government: http://www.smallgovernmentact.org

Vote No on Question One: http://votenoquestion1.com/