The state economist says Oregon is headed into a budget pit. Translation for the rest of us: Oregon is headed into a hole only because the economy is headed there first and in one sector after another, business is way down and people are earning less.

The connection between business and the health of the state budget is so obvious that nobody mentions it much. But because it isn't much mentioned, legislators can keep acting as though they can regulate the heck out of the economy that produces the wealth which, reasonably taxed, pays for schools and everything else.

What it takes to make the economy hum is employment, and employment depends on sales.

In Salem and Washington now, leaders in the executive and legislative branches are trying to make up for the slowdown in sales and employment by pushing borrowed money into the economy. It may work eventually. But in the meantime, both levels of government generally continue on the course they've been on for years.

That course is headed in one direction: More mandates, more regulation, more restrictions, more fees to pay for the regulation, and just plain more laws and rules with which business has to cope.

One long-term way to deal with the budget woes in Salem and Washington would be special sessions of the legislature and Congress dedicated solely to repealing laws that add to the cost of doing business. It won't happen, of course. It would go completely against the grain of nearly a century of how government in this country has developed.

But the recession is giving us a taste of the result.

If you lock up the forests and the land, if you close the mines, if the resources we have are put off limits, if construction is prohibited in lots of locations and hog-tied with uncounted rules everywhere else, if every session of the legislature brings more restrictions with which business has to comply, why would anyone still risk capital to start an enterprise and create a few jobs in this country or state- especially at a time when capital is hard to get and financing difficult to obtain? (hh)