Paid family leave is shaping up to be a cautionary tale about legislative punts.

Earlier this year, state lawmakers found themselves in a jam over a proposal to provide most employees five weeks of paid time off to to care for newborns, adopted children or sick family members.

Democrats had made family leave a top priority, but fierce opposition from the business community was threatening to kill the proposal. So legislators hit on a way to save face while making a show of yielding to the opposition: They kicked the can down the road.

What emerged from the session was a shell of the original proposal. The final legislation covered far fewer workers and, most significantly, lacked a funding source. Essentially, lawmakers committed to providing some family leave and then told a task force to go figure out the particulars.

That 13-member task force is now looking for ways to pay for the program, and it is eyeing the state’s general fund. Democrats and business representatives on the task force voted earlier this month to recommend using the state surplus to support the program, which could cost upwards of $100 million a biennium.

That’s a big departure from the way the family-leave program was pitched in the Legislature. The plan then was to spread the cost among all workers through a new payroll tax of 2 cents a hour — an idea that apparently isn’t as attractive in light of the 2008 elections.

Using existing tax revenue is a bad idea for several reasons, primarily because the state cannot afford it. The state surplus — which dipped below $1.4 billion earlier this month because of a slowing housing market — has enough claims on its shrinking riches. And it won’t last forever.

Task force members suggest the Legislature look for another funding source after the family-leave program’s first four years. But chances are that once the program is in the general fund, that’s where it would stay, even after the surplus is long gone.

Over the long run, making family leave a general-fund entitlement would open the door to the costly expansion of benefits. It is far easier for legislators to slip extra money to programs buried in the $30 billion general-fund budget than it would be to raise a tax on workers’ paychecks.

Lawmakers may have backed themselves into a corner. Word is that Gov. Chris Gregoire is cool to the idea of paying family-leave benefits with general-fund dollars. If she proves an obstacle, the Legislature could be faced with either raising taxes in an election year or reneging on its promise of paid family leave.

Such is the danger when legislators skip past the details on their way to a political score.