Completely predictably, after years of frivolous overspending egged on by the feds throwing money around during the pandemic, Maine is facing a budget crisis. Also completely predictably, Gov. Janet Mills is proposing a patchwork non-solution that seeks to preserve the status quo while punishing everyday Mainers for her ineptitude.

You see, Mills has not only increased spending throughout her tenure, she is refusing to reverse course now that revenues have decreased. Instead, she’s proposing a budget that is 10% larger than the prior one and, by raising taxes on tobacco and marijuana products, making the people of Maine pay for her mistakes. Apparently, she’s decided that since she’s already broken her promise not to raise taxes once, she might as well just go ahead and keep doing it.

Although it may not seem like it, Republicans in Augusta are in a good position when it comes to the budget. In the past, Democrats have made it clear that they’re willing to go it alone when there’s money to spend. Now that there are difficult decisions to be made, Republicans shouldn’t be trapped into being willing co-conspirators to allow majority Democrats to evade responsibility for their prior poor decisions.

Instead of being dragged into budget negotiations that are either ultimately fruitless or result in a budget that’s slightly less awful than Mills’ proposal, Republicans need to stake out a few clear positions and stick to them. They shouldn’t frame them as demands, but rather as immutable principles from which they will not waver. If Democrats come up with a better budget that falls in line with those principles, great; if not, they can go ahead and pass whatever they like on their own without any Republican votes.

Now, what should those principles be? Well, they ought to be based on real, traditional, fiscal conservatism. To begin with, Republicans ought to reject any sort of tax increase at all out of hand. That should be a non-starter, and it sounds as if, from their initial reactions, Republican legislators are leaning in that direction.

It doesn’t matter that Mills’ proposal is focused on raising substance taxes, nor does it matter that it’s not broad-based. Any and all tax increases, on anyone, ought to be completely unacceptable. The minute Republicans cave on that, they open the door to virtually any kind of tax increase imaginable — and Democrats know that.

Another red line for Republican legislators ought to be that the next budget can’t be any larger than the current budget. With the state facing a revenue shortfall, we need to seriously reevaluate our priorities. That must begin with freezing spending at current levels. The idea of raising spending over the next biennium by 10% is completely ridiculous and should be rejected out of hand. It’s unnecessary and reckless; it’s like being unable to pay your grocery bills, but still going on vacation and putting it on credit cards.

They can start by demanding that any new positions added to the state budget are offset by the elimination of other positions. As part of that, they should take a good, hard look at every single unfilled position. That’s simple low-hanging fruit that should be an easy area for bipartisan agreement.

This is the problem with increasing spending when times are good. It creates a new baseline of spending that is ever-increasing, making it harder to cut back when times are bad. It allows advocates for big government to frame maintaining current spending as a cut when in fact it’s a minimal dose of fiscal responsibility. There’s no reason that state spending needs to go up every biennium. In fact, it ought to be cut way back. If vital services cost more, we ought to pay for them with cuts, not an overall increase.

Moreover, the idea that we should raise taxes simply because we haven’t for a while, as Mills claims about the tobacco tax, is completely ridiculous. Taxes, like spending, do not need to be constantly increased. Mills also deserves no credit whatsoever for the few areas where she proposes cutting spending; as long as the overall budget increases, those are meaningless.

Republicans should never support a budget that raises taxes or the overall spending level, but they especially shouldn’t when there’s a shortfall. Instead, if the Democrats want to go that route, they ought to have to find the votes on their own.

They broke the state budget, they need to be the ones to fix it.