The Hawaiʻi Senate budget committee wants to wipe out a batch of state government jobs that have been vacant for nearly five years in an effort to save about $50 million.

That proposal announced by Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Donovan Dela Cruz on Monday is in keeping with a similar plan to save money by cutting vacant positions floated by Gov. Josh Green last year. But it may be difficult to actually impose those cuts.

Dela Cruz publicly presented the Senate’s proposed budget for the next two years. It anticipates spending considerably less than Green proposed at the start of the legislative session and the House approved earlier this month.

“This budget creates a proactive, efficient and cost-effective state government, stabilizes essential services and programs to address the needs of our most vulnerable residents,” Dela Cruz said, “and helps to ensure financial flexibility for the future in the face of economic uncertainty.”

Overall the Senate budget proposal totals $19.9 billion for the year that begins July 1, and $19.7 billion for the following year, Dela Cruz said.

That is hundreds of millions of dollars less than what Green proposed to spend in each of the next two years, but considerably more than the $19.13 billion budget for the current fiscal year. The House proposed its own two-year budget in early March, which would authorize spending more than $20 billion each year.

Negotiators with the House and Senate will hold a series of private conference committee meetings in the weeks ahead to iron out the differences between their spending proposals.

“We all have been discussing the economic uncertainty resulting from the federal administration, including tariffs and potential federal funding cuts,” Dela Cruz said before announcing highlights from the Senate budget proposal.

The Green administration has been counting on nearly $3.9 billion in federal funds this year and budgeted for similar federal support in each of the next two years. That has state officials worrying as they watch the turmoil in the opening months of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The House proposed setting aside $200 million in the state’s “rainy day” budget reserve fund as a hedge against possible federal budget cuts, but Dela Cruz did not say Monday whether the Senate will accept that idea.

The Senate’s proposed budget includes $3.72 billion for state construction projects next year, according to a written statement from the Senate Democratic Majority, but the list of projects the Senate wants to fund was not available Monday.

Lawmakers try to eliminate vacant state government positions almost every year, reasoning that if state departments have failed year after year to hire people to fill those jobs, they probably aren’t really needed.

Green announced last year he would also seek budget savings by eliminating positions that have been vacant for five years or more, but it is unclear how successful that initiative has been.

State departments tend to resist efforts to eliminate staff vacancies, arguing the money budgeted for vacant positions is often used to pay for emergency hires, for employee overtime or to hire people under temporary employment contracts. Money from several vacancies is sometimes pooled to hire skilled workers at higher salary levels.

The departments also contend they are unable to fill some vacancies for urgently needed, highly skilled positions such as medical professionals and engineers because state salaries are too low. A number of state departments are now seeking pay differentials to boost salaries for those hard-to-fill positions.

Dela Cruz did not respond to a request for an interview, and he gave no details in the presentation Monday about which vacant positions are to be cut or where the Ways and Means Committee reduced other spending to try to shrink the overall state budget.