All of Pennsylvania's state lawmakers should have their noses to the grindstone with the goal of assembling a 2008-09 budget that's in the best interests of the state and its taxpayers.

Unfortunately, some of last week's activity in the legislature had nothing to do with finalizing a new spending plan. Instead, it indicated that lawmakers aren't optimistic that this year's budget-preparation process will be completed by midnight June 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

That indicates the possibility of a government shutdown, effective July 1, unless there are approved actions in place to allow the government to operate beyond the fiscal year's end.

And, rather than step up the pressure to get the budget work done on time, attention instead was wrongly focused last week on making available a pool of money to fund salaries that, under state law, cannot be paid while the state, without a budget, does not have authority to spend money.

In what the Associated Press described as a mostly party-line vote, Democrats in a House committee advanced a bill to provide $20 million to pay a week's wages to the roughtly 25,000 workers who would be targeted for furlough under a budget impasse extending beyond June 30.

On June 6, the Rendell administration announced that the workers in question would be kept off the job without pay as of July 1 if a budget is not in place. Apparently if the impasse were to extend beyond a week, furloughs of most or all of those workers would become necessary.

For the Pennsylvania General Assembly, which is a full-time legislature, budget preparation should not be such a grueling, missed-deadline exercise. What the Keystone State's annual budget debacle ignores is the fact that budget preparation is one of the most basic functions of state government and it should not be such a last-minute, nerve-racking experience.

State lawmakers and the administration in power need to take more seriously their responsibility to the taxpayers to get the budget work done on time. That's achieved through give-and-take compromise.

But Pennsylvania government is so mired in partisanship that it is remarkable when anything important achieves quick and efficient passage.

Not everything that the Democrats hope to include in the 2008-09 spending plan deserves approval, and that also is true regarding some Republican priorities.

Regardless, lawmakers should commit themselves to hammering out differences before the end of the fiscal year, not days or weeks after the fiscal year has ended and what began as an impasse has evolved into a crisis.

Pennsylvania needs a budget by the end of the day on June 30, not a stopgap measure to allow the budget shenanigans to continue.

Leaders of the House and Senate and Gov. Ed Rendell should commit themselves to meeting the budget deadline. Much can be accomplished over the next 13 days if lawmakers and the governor opt to work on the next two weekends as well as during their regular Monday-through-Friday hours to settle their budget differences.

Voters should expect Harrisburg lawmakers to take whatever extraordinary measures are necessary, including weekend work, to pass a budget on time — the most basic business of state goverment.