If, as Speaker Kurt Daudt suggested, state budget making can be likened to the assembly of a three-legged stool, the leg the Minnesota House Republican majority added to the furniture Tuesday is strikingly short.

The House GOP bid would nearly flatline total state spending in the coming two years, compared with 2014-15. It would devote all — and then some — of a forecast $1.8 billion surplus to unspecified tax relief; divert $612 million from the state's general fund to transportation purposes; whack a whopping $1.15 billion from forecast human services spending; and give all of education, from preschool to college, a spare $200 million increase over forecast growth.

In all, the House plan would spend nearly $3 billion less than DFL Gov. Mark Dayton has proposed for the next two years. In addition, it proposes to spend about $4 billion less than Dayton would on transportation over the next 10 years, rejecting Dayton's proposal for a higher gas tax.

Those are giant gaps that give the Senate's DFL majority ample opportunity to land in the middle with their "third leg" budget targets, which are due for release later this week. We hope that's the position they choose. That would allow them to play a much-needed broker's role when three-way budget negotiations among the House, Senate and governor begin in earnest about one month from now.

With a $2 billion, two-year tax cut as its centerpiece, the House plan seems made to order by the state Republican Party's "Give It Back" ad campaign. But it will disappoint Minnesotans who like the ideas that have come from many quarters — including Republican ones — for shoring up state services and infrastructure after a dozen years of tight money.

The GOP plan likely is too lean to fund universal preschool, a higher ed tuition freeze, a state spur to broadband development, pay raises for home health care aides and many other items on lobbyists' wish lists. The separate transportation plan GOP House leaders unveiled on Monday would freeze Metro Transit operating funds for the foreseeable future and, in all likelihood, end the build out of the metro area's light-rail system.

It's a good bet that the House GOP bid was set intentionally low — and Dayton's high — with positioning for the spring negotiating season in mind. House Minority Leader Paul Thissen said the GOP bid is so low that it's a "recipe for a government shutdown." That would indeed be the result in July if the three-way deal making fails to produce agreement by June 30. With a large surplus in the forecast, a shutdown would amount to government malpractice. Daudt characterized his plan as "a really reasonable budget." We hope "reasonable" is every state leader's watchword in May.