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DES MOINES, IOWA -- Iowa legislators fought the winter weather to arrive at the state house Monday morning to get back to work.    

With the fall of the gavel at 10:00 a.m., the 83rd Iowa General Assembly was called to order.

Right away law makers jumped into action.

"I move that a committee of three be appointed to notify the governor that the house is duly organized," said one representative.

Legislators have a lot on the agenda.

House speaker Patrick Murphy perhaps says it best in his opening speech.

"We need to grow the economy, create job opportunity to make Iowa a green state, we need to help Iowa recover, we need to balance our budget," said Murphy.

The state faces a huge budget shortfall, but across the board, law makers say they have a plan.

"Some of the things we're going to have to do is look at programs that have been around for years and see if they're still effective. Not everything has a permanent life. So we'll look at those programs, gauge whether or not we should still be investing money in them," said St. Rep. John Whitaker of Hillsboro.

"I’m going to work with the appropriations chair and work on that," said St. Rep. Mary Gaskill of Ottumwa.

"It's going to be really difficult, what we're asking all of the departments to do is to look really closely at their budgets and look for parts of their budget that aren't being used completely or are maybe just affecting a few people," said St. Sen. Becky Schmitz of Fairfield.

"It’s just a matter of taking stock of what revenue we have and dividing them up as fairly and as evenly as we can," said St. Rep. Kurt Swaim of Bloomfield.

So just how much of a short fall will law makers be dealing with?

"We have an expected shortfall of about $700 million; the thing is a lot of that is programs we just won't fund. We're going to fund our priorities," Whitaker said.

"We have a fear that it will get worse before it will get better," Gaskill said.

All in all, law makers seem to agree that if they work together in a bipartisan manner, they'll overcome this challenge.