So there is intelligent life in Harrisburg!

Many of us had given up on a state government, whose leaders apparently believe that gambling can solve most of our fiscal woes and that for really stubborn budget problems, a tax increase during a recession will do the trick.

They even believe we believe 'em when they promise the tax hike will be temporary! They must have forgotten we're still waiting for the property tax relief we were promised if only we'd see the (neon) light and allow slot machines on our sylvan soil.

But from this morass, flickering signs of political cognition are emerging. And really, if the Republicans can't spin political gold from the commonwealth's hay, then they deserve the significant losses in voter registration that the last election cycle brought.

Historically, the GOP has been viewed as the party of fiscal restraint, but you couldn't prove it from the evidence this millennium. During much of the Bush presidency, for instance, a Republican-controlled Congress spent money with an abandon that should let them replace the "drunken sailors" of cliche fame.

At the state level, consider this: The last budget proposed by a Republican governor was Mark Schweiker's for the 2002-03 fiscal year, just as the nation was emerging from recession. With inflation running at only 1.6 percent, Gov. Schweiker held the budget to a 1.3 percent increase overall, but House Republicans, the majority, dared to extract an 8 percent increase for itself in the state budget!

And then Republicans in both chambers conspired with Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell to give judges and the General Assembly a 16 percent minimum salary boost via the infamous "stealth pay raise" of July 2005.

Perhaps the drubbing Republicans took from primary voters the following spring was the beginning of the long trek back to fiscal conservatism. Republican voters turned their greedy officials out of office with much more gusto than Democrats, and the Dems won control of the state House in November 2006 for the first time since 1994.

In the continuing unrest over irresponsible Harrisburg governance -- and in the midst of Mr. Rendell's re-election campaign -- the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center released a report defending state spending. The report declared that complaints about the state's "overspending" were "overheated," pointing out that spending growth here -- to restore what was "cut or squeezed" during the recession -- was more restrained than in other states.

Two years later, that comparison isn't much comfort. We're all in crisis -- a fact that should provoke a closer look at the numbers. At our numbers. They reveal a truly foolish trend.

Think again to Mr. Schweiker's last budget: In 2002-03, with inflation at 1.6 percent, he proposed a budget with a 1.3 percent increase.

In 2005-06 under Mr. Rendell, with inflation at 3.4 percent and state revenue growth at 6.4 percent, state spending rose 7.1 percent.

In 2006-07, with inflation at 3.2 percent and revenue growth slowing to 3.6, the budget nevertheless grew by 5.8 percent.

This year, America is experiencing inflation of -1.3 percent (deflation), state revenue has tanked, and still Mr. Rendell has proposed budget and tax increases.

If you don't include this year's fiasco, the numbers indicate that in lean times we try to match our expenditures to our income, but in flush times, we increase our spending by as much as double the rate of either inflation or revenue growth.

If you do include this year's numbers, we're facing a crisis that could be made dramatically worse with a deeply irresponsible budget.

The situation is a political opportunity for whichever party can make the best case for its policies. The Republicans, having been taken to the voters' woodshed for betraying their traditional identity, should be chomping at the bit to restore fiscal sanity to their party and to the commonwealth.

And finally, they are. They're attacking the idiocy of budget increases and tax hikes during the worst recession in generations. They're refusing to drain the "Rainy Day Fund" without serious cuts -- cuts made necessary now because of the last few years' foolish spending.

If they wanted to be truly visionary and perhaps even reverse the voters' statewide flight from their party, they could propose to reduce the size of our exorbitantly expensive Legislature. After all, we shouldn't cut necessary public services before we've cut some unnecessary public servants.

As President Barack Obama's chief of staff has so memorably pointed out, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."