AUGUSTA -- Opponents of Gov. John Baldacci's budget-balancing plan staged a wall-to-wall protest at the Statehouse on Wednesday, arguing during a packed legislative committee hearing and at a large rally that the proposed cuts would decimate services for the poor, the disabled and victims of domestic violence, among others.

Sporting brightly colored pink or green stickers that proclaimed "Maine can do better," the critics of Baldacci's plan urged the Legislature to find other ways to fill a $190 million hole in the $6.3 billion state budget for the two-year cycle that runs through June 30, 2009.

Some offered no specific alternatives, while others said the state should combine smaller spending cuts with tax increases and withdrawals from the state's savings accounts in a three-pronged approach to keeping state government in the black.

The protest came during the second and final day of legislative hearings on a new round of cuts that Baldacci proposed last week, to build on earlier reductions he unveiled in January.

Baldacci proposed additional cuts last week because the shortfall, which was initially pegged at $95 million back in January, has since doubled in size.

That's because state revenue experts concluded last month that their earlier gloomy predictions of a drop in tax collections had not been gloomy enough.

The spending cuts would affect a wide range of social and educational services, including state aid to local schools and funding for the Baxter School for the Deaf, the University of Maine System, the Maine Community College System and Maine Maritime Academy.

Some of the newest social-service cuts would eliminate prescription coverage for 18,000 childless adults on Medicaid, drop podiatry services for all Medicaid recipients and reduce funding for services to mentally-disabled people and those with developmental disabilities.

They also would eliminate state-funded food stamps for legal immigrants and cut state funding for domestic-violence and sexual-assault programs.

The original round of cuts, which remain under review by the Legislature's Appropriations Committee, included reductions in state payments to some foster parents and adoptive parents.

The Appropriations Committee will rework Baldacci's budget before submitting its own version to the full Legislature, which is currently scheduled to complete the 2008 session by April 16. The supplemental budget that the Legislature passes this year will patch up the two-year budget that lawmakers enacted in 2007.

Although the Appropriations Committee hearing dragged on for hours Wednesday and attracted a standing-room-only crowd, the biggest event was a late-morning rally that filled the Hall of Flags at the Statehouse, spilled over into adjoining hallways and jammed nearby stairways.

The crowd at the rally, which Democratic Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake later described as the biggest he had ever seen at the Statehouse in some 40 years as a state legislator, was so large that Capitol Security threatened to evacuate the building as a safety precaution if the protesters did not clear the stairways and exits.

The crowd thinned out enough at that point to allow the half-hour rally to continue.

The protest stemmed from the fact that Baldacci's plan would not raise state taxes or withdraw money from savings to help balance the budget.

Baldacci argues that Mainers already hard hit by high taxes and rising energy and food prices cannot afford to pay more taxes in a softening economy. His critics say the proposed cuts are so severe the state must find alternatives.

Some of those at the rally carried hand-made signs that read "please don't throw us away" and "stop the cuts." The protesters chanted "Maine can do better" and "save our programs," while tossing pennies and other loose change into a metal bucket adorned with a sign that read: "I am willing to invest in Maine people."

Some in the crowd wore red AARP shirts while others wore t-shirts identifying them as members of the largest state workers' union, but many were not visibly affiliated with any specific group.

"Cutting foster-care funding is shortsighted and wrong," said Joyce Blakney of Winslow, a math teacher at Waterville High School who said she is not a foster parent but values what they do.

"Frankly, as a math teacher, it just doesn't add up," she told the cheering crowd.

"Budgets are not just financial documents, they are moral documents," said the Rev. Jill Job Saxby of Cape Elizabeth, executive director of the Maine Council of Churches.

"We believe these budget cuts are fundamentally wrong," she said at the rally, "and in the long run these cuts will cost more in dollars than they save in the short run."

The testimony was more personal at the Appropriations Committee, where Abdirahman Hassan of Lewiston, a Somali immigrant, pleaded with the panel through an interpreter not to deprive him of food stamps.

Hassan, a single man who said he has lived in Lewiston for two years, was blunt when asked during an interview what will happen to him if he loses his food stamps.

"I will go hungry," Hassan said through his translator. "That means I will die."

The governor's plan to drop prescription coverage for childless adults on Medicaid prompted Evan Andrews of Bangor to tell the committee he has severe asthma and relies on the state to pay for his medications.

Andrews, who takes six asthma medications daily, said during an interview he does not know what he will do if he loses his coverage, but he knows what will happen if he does not take his medication. "My airways would close up and I could not breathe," he said.

Cutting in-home, case-management and therapeutic services for the mentally disabled cause eight-year-old Olivia Ortiz of Livermore Falls to regress, according to her mother, Cynthia Ortiz, who said in an interview that her daughter has mild to moderate disability.

"She would become more difficult to handle in school," Ortiz said. "She would become more difficult to handle at home. She would miss out on being part of the community."

The impact of such testimony was not lost on the governor's office, said Baldacci Spokesman David Farmer. But Farmer said the governor is looking out for those Mainers who cannot afford higher taxes.

"I don't think anybody suggests that these cuts are easy or pleasant," Farmer said.

"We know these cuts hurt" the people who would be directly affected by them, Farmer said, but he said there are "other people out there who are also struggling to pay their bills and to make ends meet and to get by."