SOME OF US, IF WE have decent jobs and support networks, can make it through a year without a pay raise, even with higher insurance costs and inflation.

That's not always the case for children who are struggling to learn to read or write. Shortchange their education for a year, and they can fall behind and never catch up. And so they cost society when that failure leads them to drop out of school, perhaps turn to crime, perhaps just get a dead-end job and have babies they can't afford to care for.

It's not always the case for chronically ill seniors who can't afford their medicine. Take that away for a year, and they might have a debilitating stroke, which we pay for when they land in the hospital.

It's not always the case for prison wardens trying to stop prisons -- overly packed with inmates with no access to education or rehabilitation programs, and with insufficient guards -- from exploding in riots, hostage-takings, murders, possibly escapes.

It's not always the case for the mentally ill patients who need regular medical attention. Make the state cut back on treatment for a year, and they'll skip their medications, and a treatable illness will produce violent episodes that endanger themselves and others.

It's not always the case for communities that rely on the expertise of SLED to help capture criminals before the crime sprees intensify. Or for the people traveling on highways that become more deadly by the day as the Highway Patrol has to cut back its presence.

It's tempting to pretend that the state's deepening budget crisis doesn't affect us. It does. Whether through meltdowns or simply through higher property taxes for those of us living in communities able to take over some of the state's responsibilities, it will touch us all.

What have our elected officials done? They propose extremes -- the largest tax increase in state history or a massive overhaul of our tax code that hasn't been properly vetted -- and then they reject them. Miraculously, the Congress came to our rescue last week, sending down what might be enough money to take care of Medicaid -- for one year. But there will be nothing left to address the rest of our needs, and so the rest of our social infrastructure will rot.

It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, we can't afford for it to be this way.

South Carolina has long-term needs. We don't educate all of our children; our tax system is a jumbled mess; we treat optional programs the same as essential programs; we lock away petty criminals and act as though they aren't going to get out eventually; we have some of the deadliest highways in the nation.

We should use this budget crisis as the impetus to finally address all these problems. If our legislators cannot do that, they still have to address our immediate needs. Lawmakers should increase the cigarette tax (which nearly everyone outside the State House supports) and impose whatever other tax increases are needed to meet these basic, essential needs. It won't be easy to reach an agreement to do this, much less on how to do it. But an agreement must be reached. Legislators must keep working until they get the job done.

And then, with the status quo preserved, they should turn their attention to next year, and to finding ways to improve it. We can get through this crisis with slightly higher taxes. But the underlying problems will remain until the Legislature decides to address them.