As deadline approached this week, word was filtering out of Trenton that no further cuts to the state budget may be needed.

While some may be breathing a sigh of relief, the news surely comes as cold comfort to New Jersey’s most vulnerable residents.

Unless something changes and fast, they will still be feeling a disproportionate share of pain according to two of the state’s leading advocates for their cause.

The advocates, Fran Dolan, executive director of Catholic Charities in the Trenton Diocese, and the Rev. Bruce H. Davidson, director of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry, have been calling on government to answer to its better angels for months now in regard to the spending plan.

As the budget comes down to the fiscal wire, they still haven’t given up and I’m hoping people will listen.

In a compelling op-ed piece in the Star Ledger May 16, Davidson focused on the state of a state where recovery is “a long way off for millions of households.”

Low-income people, he wrote, who had begun to escape poverty are falling into it again and the ongoing recession has caused a growing number of people, “including many from the middle class” to join the ranks of the poor.

He noted that this budget is the “first in recent memory with no new funding to assist people living in poverty and it includes this decade’s most severe funding reductions in programs that support those in need.”

A couple of days later, Dolan and Catholic Charities joined Davidson in “raising our voices to express concern for New Jersey’s most vulnerable citizens…the individuals and families who will be most negatively impacted by the proposed budget.”

Dolan and Davidson both provided insight into just how the vulnerable will be impacted if the proposed budget cuts are approved.

In his op-ed, Davidson noted that among the proposed cuts are: A 20 percent reduction in the State Earned Income Tax Credit, a work incentive program that gives New Jersey’s lowest wage workers additional income tax refunds; a one-third cut to state financing for legal services and the elimination of the already very low cash assistance – $140 per month – childless adults on General Assistance receive to cover housing and basic necessities.

Dolan noted reductions in the school breakfast and lunch programs and the elimination of 50,000 parents from the Family Care health care program. Some $5 million in utility assistance is also slated to be cut meaning the growing number of people in reduced circumstances will find it even more difficult to meet increasing energy costs.

“These cuts are hitting those who are barely making it now, even with minimal assistance from Catholic Charities,” Dolan said.

“Moreover, nonprofits such as our agency, are grappling with both decreased public funding as well as a downturn in donations caused by the challenging economic reality.”

Both of the advocates appealed to legislators not to reduce income or increase the expenses of those already crippled by the economic downturn.

Dolan pointed out that there are more than 33,000 nonprofits competing for decreasing funding in New Jersey, a situation that is bound to have a deleterious impact on many struggling souls.

As Davidson put it, “recovery is a long way off for a lot of people… People in poverty are continually making sacrifices. Most of them have nothing more to give.”