JUST A FEW HOURS before lawmakers washed their hands of the dangers to which they are subjecting our state, a State House veteran noted that after a month of haggling, "both sides are exhausted, and both sides feel like they're losing."

They're right. However you define the sides -- Democrats and Republicans, senators and representatives, those trying to bail our state out of its worst financial crisis in decades and those content to sit on their hands -- they're both losers. And so are all of us.

True, it's not as bad as it could have been. But that's no thanks to our legislators. What glimmer of hope we have is thanks to the Congress, which bailed out the Medicaid program by giving us enough federal money so that we could keep paying doctors and hospitals and pharmacies the insufficient amount we're currently paying them to take care of the people who are too sick and too poor to pay for their own care -- for one year.

There were even a few million federal dollars left to sprinkle onto public education, so our per-pupil funding will be $1,701 instead of $1,643. But that's still $500 less than what is required by state law -- a law that has been fudged over the years to hold the number down artificially; it's less, in real dollars, than we've spent at any time in the two and a half decades since we made a commitment to educating all of our children.

SLED might not have to lay off any more agents -- although it's already down about 60 -- thanks to a special surcharge on police tickets that our "no taxes" Legislature had the good sense to pass. The Department of Juvenile Justice might get out from under federal oversight because it's getting part of the $25 million from that fee, too. But both agencies, along with the Corrections Department and the Highway Patrol, are at the breaking point. If anything breaks badly in the next 12 months, we will have a crisis on our hands.

Sort of like the crisis we already have on our hands with dangerously mentally ill people who aren't getting the treatment they need; if we're lucky, they'll just keep clogging our emergency rooms, making true "emergency" care a roll of the dice for the rest of us. If we're not lucky, they'll kill themselves and others.

Legislators say this is the best they could do under the circumstances. It's not. Not by a long shot.

They could have increased the cigarette tax to the national average, as three-quarters of us want, bringing in needed money and reducing the number of kids who start smoking. They could have raised other taxes.

But they couldn't raise taxes, they say. Let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that this is a rational statement. Even if you pretend that, this still isn't the best they could do. Not by a long shot.

They could have done what every business, every non-profit, every family does in times of financial crisis. They could have eliminated the things that seemed essential until the crisis hit -- the taxpayer-funded lobbyists, the jail cell for every truant and every adult caught with drugs, the cost of running 85 separate school districts and 33 separate colleges, to name a few. That would have freed up money to spend on teachers and troopers and mental health doctors and prison guards.

Yes, legislators set priorities. They said Medicaid is our top priority. They said public education is next. But they only set one more priority: They made it a priority not to make any difficult decisions, not to do any hard work, not to put themselves out on a limb. Not to save our state from crisis. And they did a remarkably good job of meeting that priority.