Hold on to your pocketbooks, a new round of state tax increases appears to be on the way, especially in Midwestern states, with businesses being targeted.

Five governors are proposing hefty tax increases to bankroll ambitious new health-care and education programs. States appear eager to provide coverage for some of the nations 46.6 million without health insurance.

The new interest in raising taxes is strikingly different from the trend of recent years when legislatures, facing a fiscal crisis, bent over backwards to avoid major tax hikes. Instead, they raided rainy day funds, borrowed money, or expanded gambling to raise more revenue.

Then, the aim was to keep the state budget out of the red.

Now, the aim is to expand the reach of state government - often to provide health coverage for more citizens.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is pitching a whopping $6 billion in new business taxes to pay for his plan to extend health-care coverage to 1.4 million uninsured adults.

In Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell stunned state lawmakers with her proposal to lift the income tax rate by 10 percent to bring in $1.3 billion of new money for education.

The governors of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin both want to slap higher taxes on smokers and oil companies, with the extra cash going specifically to provide health care coverage to the uninsured and to patch roads.

And Michigan is looking at higher business and "sin" taxes to close its $3 billion deficit and to enable more school districts to offer full-day preschool to four-year-olds.

These are the states first round of budgets since the 2006 election increased Democrats' hold on governorships to 28 and gave the Democratic Party the upper hand in 23 statehouses. Most, though not all, of the proposed tax increases come from Democrats.

While pressure is building in a number of states to cut property taxes, so is interest among some politicians to bump up certain taxes and use the money for specific projects that might have been ignored during the years of budget cutbacks.

One reason steeper taxes may be attractive is that states have big-ticket items looming on the horizon that must compete for scarce dollars. Spending on existing education and health care programs typically eats up more than half of a state budget, leaving the rest to be divvied up between transportation projects that have been put on hold, future pension and health care needs for state retirees, and costly federal mandates such as REAL ID, a law that requires states to beef up the security of their drivers licenses.

Several states are facing huge holes in their budgets. In the Rust Belt, Illinois and Michigan are struggling to close deficits of $2 billion and $3 billion, respectively. California and Florida are each looking at $1 billion shortfalls for the fiscal years that begin July 1.

Among the proposals for higher taxes:

* Illinois's Blagojevich wants to impose a gross receipts tax on businesses that have gross revenue of more than a $1 million a year and a 3 percent payroll tax on employers that fail to offer health insurance. The new revenue would pay for his health care and education proposals.

* Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has proposed a 6 percent tax on oil company profits to pay for mass-transit projects and an increase from 6 percent to 7 percent in the state sales tax to fund education programs and to cut property taxes.

* Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle wants to tax hospitals 1 percent of their gross revenue and boost to $2.02 from 77 cents the tax on a pack of cigarettes in his bid to see that 98 percent of Wisconsin residents are insured. Doyle also wants both a new 2.5 percent tax on oil companies profits and a law preventing companies from simply passing the tax on to consumers by raising pump prices.

* Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has proposed a new 2 percent excise tax on most services, a 5-cent increase in the $2-per-pack levy on a pack of cigarettes and a 10 percent jump in the liquor tax to help close a $3 billion deficit and expand early childhood education by $200 million.

* Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner has called for adding 5 cents to the states 23-cent-a-gallon fuel tax to help pay for road construction.