"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way go through life, son.''

That advice from Dean Wormer to the frat boy Flounder in "Animal House" comes to mind when I ponder our Pennsylvania Legislature inaction. (In Harrisburg, "in action" is always best compressed to one word.)

Slow, corrupt and expensive is no way to run a state government, brothers and sisters.

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PG STORE

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Brian O'Neill's book, "The Paris of Appalachia: Pittsburgh in the Twenty-first Century," is available in the PG store.

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Most of us have spent too much time recently watching Pittsburgh leaders handle the G-20 by adopting the credo, "We won't let anarchists shut down this city -- we'll do it!" But did any of us stop to ponder the irony of having the world economic conference in the only state in America that hasn't passed a budget yet?

Here's what you missed in Harrisburg if you were watching the world meet in Pittsburgh's Golden Barricaded Triangle:

Nothing.

As I write late Friday afternoon, there still is no state budget. This is the seventh consecutive year that America's Largest Full-Time State Legislature has been unable to perform its principal task on time. It's more than three months overdue.

If nothing else, that is yet another argument to shrink the statehouse. Surely, it could not do its job with 201 members as easily as it can't do it with 253, and we'd save a fortune. Cutting the size of the Legislature by 20 percent -- or its cost by 20 percent -- could save as much as $60 million to $70 million a year.

That's based on current average cost of well over $1 million per legislator. Salary, perks, offices, staff, travel -- it adds up quickly for our 21 dozen lawmakers. That's nearly two gross. The cost is more than too gross.

Regular readers of this column have heard such arguments for years, and know that no progress has been made. Because downsizing the General Assembly would take a constitutional change and nearly all the constitutional levers are in the hands of the lawmakers.

Perhaps there was a time when we could shrug that off, but Harrisburg is doing especially obvious harm these days. The 253-headed monster is looking everywhere but to its own bloated self to find money to make up for the $3.2 billion drop in state revenue caused by the recession.

Gov. Ed Rendell began the process badly back in the spring by suggesting raising the personal income tax rate from 3.07 percent to 3.57 percent, a terrible idea in a recession.

After haggling with the Republican-controlled Senate, the Democratic governor got behind a $27.9 billion budget deal that would have raised millions by extending the sales tax to tickets for cultural performances, museums, zoos and historical sites. It also would put a 20 percent tax on "small games of chance'' (other than bingo) run by fraternal and veterans group.

House Democrats nixed that idea last week. They'd make up the revenue by taxing natural gas production, as more than half the states do, including Republican strongholds such as Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Alaska and Utah. Pennsylvania could raise yet more by "ending our bizarre practice of being the only state that doesn't tax cigars or smokeless tobacco," Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, said.

Republicans oppose the natural gas tax in fear that it would discourage natural gas companies from drilling into Marcellus Shale. That may sound like the lead singer of a '50s doo-wop group, but it's actually sedimentary rock in the Appalachian basin, rich in untapped natural gas reserves.

If such a tax works for the big Western states, it should work here. Pennsylvania will increase the amount of state forest land available for natural gas drilling, so why not ask for something in return?

The House bill also would slap a 34 percent tax on table games once they're approved for casinos. In response, casino officials have said such a hefty tax would stop them from introducing table games.

That's called "a bluff'' in at least one table game I know. We should call casino owners on it. Even if they're not bluffing, we wouldn't lose anything we don't already have.

No matter where you stand on any of these taxes, you might ask yourself why our Legislature is nibbling at these troughs while making no wholesale cuts itself. It's true that savings from downsizing would not be immediate, but it would be massive and would be there each year.

That would sure beat hiking the take from taking kids to the zoo.