More than one state Capitol observer has likened state lawmakers' out-of-control spending to a drug addiction one that fully reveals itself at a time when the addict really, really, really must stop, but can't.
Exhibit A: The hundreds of pork-barrel projects and non- essential spending bills that ought to have been dropped at the very first hint of a budget crisis. The number of proposals for pork projects and special-interest payoffs that continue to pour into the Legislature is astounding.

Collectively, the 180-or-so bills introduced in the state Senate would cost taxpayers nearly $28 billion in the first year alone, at a time when the state is deadlocked in a bitter, divisive fight over how to manage a $38-billion deficit.

What's going on here? Those bills won't all be approved, of course, but the mere fact that lawmakers continue to introduce them shows how deeply in denial they are, or, more likely, how badly they want to bring the bacon home to impress their local constituencies and keep campaign contributors happy.

That mentality is a big part of what got the state into this mess in the first place. Spend, spend, spend, and when the bills come due, borrow and pray. Hardly a recipe for a sound economic future.

And when state officials emerge from the pork factories to address the public on the budget crisis, the only options they present are raising taxes or cutting deeply into essential services for children and seniors not a peep about cutting bloated salaries and nonessential spending, streamlining bureaucracies, consolidating departments, and otherwise trimming fat and waste. That isn't too much to ask.

And why is it so hard, at least while the state is drowning in red ink, to stop piling on new expenses on top of the old?

The only solution to this addiction may be a forceful intervention, by voters at election time.