Topeka ? A bill meant to ensure the state can pay its bills for the next month advanced out of a House committee Monday. But last week’s report showing January revenues came in $47.2 million short of estimates could make the rest of the current year’s budget more complicated.

“We’re providing certainty for the folks that rely on us to make payments to them, and this does help add to that certainty,” said Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe.

The bill includes many of the items Gov. Sam Brownback proposed in the “allotment” plan he announced in December, shortly after new revenue estimates showed the state would come up about $279 million short of what it needs to fully fund this year’s budget.

That allotment plan was meant to ensure the state did not go in the hole at the end of the fiscal year, which is prohibited by the state constitution. The bill now headed to the floor of the House goes beyond that, and was originally expected to leave the state with a $70 million ending balance.

But the actions taken by the House committee Monday, combined with Friday’s revenue report, effectively reduce that to about $10 million.

The bill, which could be debated on the floor of the House as early as Tuesday, calls for shifting $158.5 million out of the state highway fund into the general fund; reducing payments into the state pension plan by about $48 million and sweeping about $12 million out of the Kansas Endowment for Youth, or KEY fund, which comes from tobacco settlement money and is meant to fund programs for at-risk children.

The bill also includes additional spending authority to fully fund this year’s social service caseloads, but it does not include roughly $63 million needed to fully fund this year’s school finance formula.

Administration officials say many items needed to fund this year’s budget, including the education money, will be included in a so-called “mega” bill that will be introduced later in the session. This bill, they said, is needed to solve an immediate cash-flow problem that otherwise could force the state to delay payments to public schools and Medicaid providers later in the month.

Democrats on the panel tried unsuccessfully to reduce the amount of money being swept out of the KEY fund. Brownback had proposed sweeping $14.5 million out of the fund this year, but Republicans would agree only to reduce that to $12 million.

Ryckman said the bill will help get the state through the next few months, but he made clear that more budget cuts are likely to come in the next two fiscal years.

“Our intent is to make sure we can pay our bills on time,” he said. “In the short amount of time we have, we might have taken a battle-ax approach, and this will slow the process down to be more precise for the reductions that will come for (fiscal years) 2016 and 2017.”

“I think they’re just putting a Band-Aid on the situation and hoping everything gets better, but we should be doing more work on this,” said Rep. Jerry Henry, the ranking Democrat on the committee.