Gov. Bush was clear on Tuesday that he will make the implementation of voter-approved Amendment 9 as painful as possible, in hopes of forcing Floridians to take it back.

Are Florida voters the silly fools that Gov. Jeb Bush implies them to be? Did they vote last fall for Amendment 9, the class size initiative, in blissful ignorance that there would have to be money to pay for it?

The answer to both questions is no. Voters knew that Amendment 9 would be costly, as Bush had missed no chance to tell them. They knew also that he had refused to say how he would pay for it. That they re-elected him anyhow is owed in large part to their trust in him, and to the fact that his opponent couldn't say how he would pay for it either.

If voters made any mistake, it was in expecting Bush to reciprocate their faith.

His speech to the Legislature Tuesday confirmed in every detail the "devious plans" to which he had alluded before the election, unaware that a journalist was listening. Embarrassed by that disclosure, he tried at the time to pass it off as simple sarcasm. That wasn't true at all.

Bush made it plain Tuesday that he wants to force another vote on Amendment 9 (and on the high-speed rail initiative voters had approved two years earlier). This time, he wants to confront them with the "massive tax increases" these would entail. Bush didn't specify what taxes he has in mind, but it's a safe bet that of all the possibilities, they'd be the least popular and the least likely to pass.

Meanwhile, as his budget proposal had already dramatized, this year's first phase of Amendment 9 compliance is to be as painful as possible. No new taxes. Cut the universities. Slash programs that protect kids from crime. Chop Medicaid programs that save people's lives. Loot environmental, highway and other trust funds so as to violate the solemn promises that accompanied the taxes to finance them. Blame everything on Amendment 9.

It is hard to remember a more disgraceful hour in Florida's modern history.

People elect legislators and, yes, governors, to deal with the details of budgets and taxes, not to pass the buck back to them. It should be necessary for the public to vote only when the Constitution stands in the way. One such event was the 1971 special election that authorized a corporate income tax -- the last occasion, it should be noted, that Florida's tax structure was successfully reformed.

"We chose our president by 537 votes in Florida, and we didn't do that election over," says U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, the sponsor of Amendment 9. "If we step onto the slippery slope of having do-over elections because elected officials don't want to carry out the will of voters, what is our democracy worth?"

Citizens hoping for leadership in Tallahassee Tuesday found at least the minority Democrats, and to their credit, many of the Senate Republicans, at sharp odds with the governor. But the sad prospect is that without an equivalent renaissance of conscience among the House leadership, Bush will likely have his way.

How long, Florida? How much worse must it get?

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