TALLAHASSEE -- Florida's budget had a $1.5 billion hole punched in it Friday when state economists forecast that tax collections would be far lower than expected because of the tanking housing industry, rising fuel prices, a tightening credit market and record job losses.

No area of state revenue was spared a decrease -- from tourism and other sales-tax collections to corporate income taxes and real estate taxes.

The ripple effect on the $66 billion state budget could be dire.

After a year of cuts, the budget is already about $6 billion lower than the prior year's spending plan and reflects hefty reductions in everything from healthcare to road spending to education.

The tough times are taking a toll on Gov. Charlie Crist, whose poll numbers are ticking down with the economy. He'll have to decide whether to dip into reserves of up to $1.6 billion, continue a 4 percent across-the-board cut to state agencies that could save $1 billion or do something in between.

The Republican-led Legislature gave Crist special authority to move budget money around with reduced legislative oversight so they could avoid an election-year special lawmaking session, something Democrats are calling for anyway.

Crist won't say yet what he plans.

In advance of Friday's bad news, Crist announced on Thursday a massive $30 billion re-investment program, Accelerate Florida, to speed up existing state construction programs already budgeted.

Crist said his new plan would ``stimulate this economy significantly and create new jobs.''

But a closer look at the project list shows the governor may be over-promising. Of the $28.6 billion he cited, $19.8 billion is the Department of Transportation's entire five-year work plan. DOT officials said they don't know what they could accelerate.

''Some of it is already committed. The remainder we're trying to accelerate,'' said Kevin Thibault, DOT's assistant secretary for engineering and operations.

The economists who met Friday as the Revenue Estimating Conference didn't know much about the program, nor did they consider it in their projects. Unlike Crist and Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, who spoke of positive economic signs, the analysts saw tough times ahead.

''These sort of doldrums will continue probably well into 2009,'' said Mike Duckett, an analyst with the governor's office.

The economists estimated that the state will have to wait until the 2011-12 budget year to collect the equivalent amount of taxes reaped in 2005-06.

As they debated the size of the revenue hole, the nation's new job-loss figures were released, showing 96,800 Floridians lost jobs from July 2007 to July 2008, making the state the job-loss leader.

The economists said the state is in a vicious cycle spun by high fuel prices and the bad housing market. People are buying less of everything. The big-ticket purchases are smaller. The cars people are buying are smaller. So the sales tax collections on the purchases are smaller, too. And so are the collections from insurance purchased on the less-expensive automobiles.

Sales tax collections, the mainstay of the budget, are projected to top $17.9 billion for this budget year, which would be $505 million less than was collected the year before and $1.1 billion less than the state had anticipated collecting.

Corporate income taxes are forecast to decline below last year's level, to about $2 billion, $196.5 million less than had been forecast. That's on top of an 8.6 percent decline that the economists already estimated.

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