The chickens have come home to roost after six five years of runaway spending by Gov. Ed Rendell.

Pennsylvania is facing a budget deficit of up to $2.5 billion or more.

State spending has increased $8 billion since Rendell came to Harrisburg in 2003 and that's not counting the $3 billion in debt Rendell pushed through the doormat state Legislature.

Rendell and legislative leaders say they can't find any fat to trim from $28.3 billion General Fund budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Columnist Eric Heyl, writing in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, doesn't have a problem finding places to cut.

From Heyl's column:

Pennsylvania taxpayers are spending $192 million this year to operate the state House and $102 million on the Senate. An additional $38.4 million is being spent on legislative committees, commissions, bureaus and agencies.

Add the numbers: $332.4 million.

That staggering sum is $43 million more than what was budgeted this year for all state health care programs. Yet our needlessly large, appallingly expensive and abhorrently clueless body of elected officials is stumped over what it could cut.

Read "Lean budget requires butcher" at the newspaper's Web site.