ANYBODY WHO'S been paying attention has known that there will be another round of state budget cuts next year - if not sooner. But it's still sobering to see the numbers laid out on paper:

Even with tax collections projected to grow at 2 percent, the state's mandatory obligations mean budget writers start with just $90 million more to spend than the $4.9 billion currently being spent on state government operations.

But because of the way this year's budget was put together, the state has to spend at least $235 million more just to maintain the current, reduced, level of funding for those programs.

Add in other obligations and near-obligations, and the state starts next year needing to cut anywhere from $300 million to $630 million just to keep the budget balanced.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bobby Harrell called his panel together last week for a first look at the budget picture - a month ahead of the normal schedule - and urged his colleagues to go ahead and get started on the difficult decisions ahead.

That's positive.

What's not positive was that the 25-member committee was operating in default mode.

The default mode is to look for things to reject on the list of "new" spending that makes up that $630 million deficit. And that makes sense. But it only goes so far, because the list includes some things you can't simply ignore, from the $235 million it takes to pay for programs already approved but paid for with one-time money that isn't around this year to an extra $4 million to pay for the scholarships the Legislature promised everybody who gets Bs in high school and $46 million to make sure Medicaid can keep offering its current, inadequate services to the growing list of people who qualify for them.

The closest anyone came to trying to acknowledge that doing the same old thing isn't going to work any longer was when Rep. Ken Kennedy kept demanding of Rep. Harrell when "the leadership" was going to propose raising taxes, rather than cutting more. Why tax increases aren't on the table is a legitimate question - after all, everybody says they want to run government like a business, and one of the things businesses do when they don't have enough money is to figure out if there are places they can raise their prices. But it's not simply the job of "the leadership" to make such proposals; every member of the General Assembly is supposed to be a leader. And Rep. Harrell is probably right when he says there's little appetite for tax increases.

Concede that fact, though, and you're still left with a mess that isn't being adequately addressed.

We need to make sure we're spending those insufficient dollars on the absolutely most essential programs, and not wasting a single penny on things we can do without. We've cut state agencies deeply enough that in some cases, the money is probably being wasted, because there's not enough to accomplish anything. It's time to step back and pretend we're starting a government from scratch. Under those circumstances, what would you pay for with $5 billion?

In other words, we need to stop asking, "What can we cut?" and start asking, "What should we fund?"

Nobody in the room suggested anything so radical.

Rep. Harrell did say he expects the panel to work closely with Gov. Mark Sanford on what he has promised will be a budget that questions all of our assumptions. "I think it's going to be a little different from what we're used to," Mr. Harrell said, "and frankly I'm looking forward to it."

Beyond that, though, it was the routine routine: All the committee members get a giant folder filled with information on the agencies that will come before their specific subcommittees. Each subcommittee will start reviewing the agencies assigned to it, and looking for ways to trim. As Rep. Harrell predicted, probably accurately: "I think we'll deal with it like we did the last three years; subcommittees will figure out how much we need to cut to keep the budget in balance, and bring it back to the full committee."

And so the result will be what it has been for the last three years: Each subcommittee will act as an advocate for those agencies it oversees, fighting to make sure they get as large a piece of the budget pie as possible, and nobody will look at the government as a whole. It's no accident that committee members were given the percentages: Treat everybody the same, and pay for everything on the list, and all the agencies will have to take a 15 percent cut. (Leave out education, and the cut doubles. Don't pay for adequate student funding and state employee health insurance, and the cut for everybody drops to about 7 percent.) On top of three years of planned and unplanned cuts.

Of course, this isn't a problem unique to the S.C. House; it's the nature of legislative bodies. Perhaps it's impossible for a committee to tackle such a massive task as this.

But somebody has to look at the entire government and figure out what we have to do and what we don't have to do, how we can work across agencies on innovations that don't fall neatly into the purview of one little subcommittee, and how we can operate more efficiently.

That is why it is so crucial that Gov. Sanford deliver on his promise to write a budget that is built on the assumption that nothing is sacred, that everything is subject to question - and to change. It's our only hope of getting out of this mess without doing permanent, irreparable damage to our state.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.