IN AN ATTEMPT TO save money and set priorities, the House Ways and Means Committee proposes to eliminate funding for the state Procurement Review Panel. In an attempt to raise money and create a more even tax structure, the panel proposes to collect a new license tax on satellite TV. Multiply those efforts a hundredfold, and you'd have a good start on creating a responsible state budget.

But they are not multiplied. They stand alone as the only program elimination (saving $109,000) and the only tax increase (raising $2.5 million) in a budget that resorts once again to slightly modified across-the-board cuts to agencies both essential and optional.

The budget the full House is set to begin debating on Tuesday is not only a disappointment; it is a total failure. It must not be passed without massive changes.

If this proposal, or anything even remotely resembling it, becomes law, consider just a few of the results:

• Some school districts likely will be forced to shorten the school year, cheating their students out of instruction time they already don't get enough of.

• The Mental Health Department, whose inability to provide treatment for mentally ill people charged with crimes has already resulted in at least one death, will receive $8 million less than it was promised this year.

• The state Medicaid program will receive $83 million less than it needs to keep current programs going. This will mean more poor people being treated for free in emergency rooms -- and hospitals passing on more of the cost to insurance companies, and thus to all of us.

• The Department of Corrections, which got approval last week to run a $27 million deficit so it won't have to release inmates, will see an increase of $9 million -- or $18 million less than it needs just to keep the lights on.

And these are the good cases. These are the agencies whose jobs the Legislature acknowledges are so vital that they will receive more money next year than they ended up receiving after this year's mid-year cuts.

Most agency budgets will be cut. That's probably appropriate, under the circumstances. What is not appropriate is that with the one exception, none of the agencies will be eliminated. None of the agencies will receive instructions on which programs to shut down.

There will likely be attempts in the House to change that; there certainly should be. Legislators should offer amendments to eliminate programs and agencies we can live without and to fund vital services adequately. And if eliminating non-essential programs won't save enough to balance the budget without crippling essential services, they should propose tax increases.

Then representatives need to break with the tradition of rallying around the Ways and Means Committee's budget and automatically rejecting any substantive amendments. They need to seriously consider all the proposals and vote for the least-bad ideas, no matter how long it takes or how uncomfortable it gets.

We would never suggest that it's easy to come up with a responsible way to cut half a billion dollars from a $5 billion budget, particularly after two years of cuts have pared away the easy excesses. It will be even more difficult to get 63 people to agree to such a plan, as the House must do. No matter how difficult it is, though, it is the job that our legislators were elected to do. It is the job that our state desperately needs them to do. Anything short of that will be an abdication of their duty and oath of office -- and an injustice to our state.