TO HEAR GOV. Mark Sanford talk, the House is embarking on a wild spending spree that will endanger our state’s credit rating because 1) it isn’t moving fast enough to replenish trust funds that were raided during the economic downturn and 2) it isn’t doing enough to cut taxes and meet an artificial cap on spending.

To hear House leaders talk, the state would have to shortchange public education if it did what the governor requested.

Both cases are overstated. But while we are not convinced that the state’s credit rating will suffer if the trust funds aren’t completely replenished this year (Mr. Sanford’s tax cut plan would be much more likely to cause that), the fact is that this task should be a higher priority than the Ways and Means Committee’s budget makes it. And that can be accomplished while still spending as much as the panel proposed on the schools and other crucial state services.

That’s because the money that should be used to shore up trust funds is just like the money lawmakers took out of the trust funds — one-time money that won’t be available to spend on ongoing programs in years to come. Unlike in previous years, this year’s budget wisely uses the bulk of the one-time money to pay for one-time expenses, such as purchasing school buses and police cars and equipment, catching up on badly neglected maintenance of government buildings and upgrading computer systems at state agencies.

But it also uses millions of dollars worth of one-time money to spread cash around in powerful legislators’ home districts, from $875,000 for a bike and walking trail along Greenville’s Reedy River and $1 million for the S.C. Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs to $7 million for Charlestown Landing and $500,000 for the Morris Island Lighthouse.

In addition, the budget spends $14.5 million to establish new competitive grant programs designed to encourage economic development, tourism, government efficiency and better health. The grant programs were designed in response to Mr. Sanford’s complaints that the Legislature uses the budget as a slush fund to pay (sometimes secretly) for legislators’ special projects.

Requiring communities and businesses to compete for grants is certainly an improvement, and should be applauded. But it’s hard to see why we should put extra money into what are by definition “extras” when we haven’t met our basic obligations. And repaying the trust funds is a basic obligation.

The House budget does spend $117 million to replenish legally required reserve funds, fully restore 39 trust funds and partially restore two others. But Mr. Sanford wants to spend twice that much to finish the job. (He also wants to spend another $135 million — thereby eating up nearly all of the $370 million in one-time money available this year — to beef up a reserve fund for the state employees’ insurance program that officials decided to shrink in recent years.)

We’ve always considered restoring trust funds a top priority for one-time money. Money in those funds, set up to pay for everything from the clean-up of dangerous waste sites to lawsuits filed against state government, was collected under the promise that it would be used only for a specific purpose. The fact that lawmakers propose to use so much of the one-time money on optional programs that have the aroma of bacon makes it an even easier call.