As the 60-day regular legislative session begins Monday in Olympia, I’ll find myself between a rock and a hard place. But it’s better than staring at four white walls in a padded room.

I don’t like politics. It’s a polarizing game. But in this climate, it’s kind of like trying to drive by the scene of a gnarly accident. You just can’t go by without turning your head to catch a glimpse of anything there might be to see.

Trouble is, what’s left often doesn’t tell the whole story.

Legislators have a tough road to ride this spring. And that in itself is the one-liner of a broken record, considering the fact that lawmakers have faced more red ink in the past biennium than any of us can imagine.

State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, attempted to put it in perspective at the Gig Harbor Chamber of Commerce-sponsored public affairs forum on Dec. 22. Close all of our state two-year and four-year colleges, shutter all of our prisons and cease all of our environmental programs, and we’d get close to the $2 billion deficit for the 2011-13 biennium.

Even the word “deficit” is deceiving. In simple language, the state is scheduled to spend more money than it is projected to bring in.

Kilmer pointed out, though, that state general fund revenues are actually up, and the reason the gap is so wide is because the state isn’t expecting federal stimulus funds to offset the problem.

We’ve already seen cuts to education — our “paramount duty,” according to the state constitution — and other folks who are the most vulnerable are even more vulnerable with a lack of basic health insurance and other programs.

We’re sending lawmakers into a no-win situation. The best they can do is reduce the size of government, which typically grows in good times and shrinks in fiscally difficult times.

As much as it hurts, the state parks board made the right call to lay off several parks rangers last week. If they had waited until the Legislature directed them to do so, it would have been much more costly for taxpayers.

Lawmakers should take note of successful business models, particularly ones which have cut employees to stay afloat. Yes, unemployment hurts — growing jobs will be the way we get out of this recession that supposedly ended 2 1/2 years ago — but businesses which made that difficult call stand a better chance to survive.

State government should have followed that pattern two years ago, when federal stimulus money was used as a stop-gap with a gigantic clause: It could only be used once.

That was the time to make those deep cuts, to sock away money for these rainy days and to put us back on the road to recovery.

Unfortunately, the demand on social services has gone up, many of the unemployed want to go back to school to study for a second career, and there are more special interests at stake that pull at legislators’ heartstrings every time they catch wind that their program may lose funding.

Oh, and no federal stimulus funds. No bailout. Although we were warned. Profusely.

I don’t like politics. It’s a polarizing game.

But when I’m rubber-necking during the next 60 days, I hope I see more than our state economy in a state of ruin.

Brian McLean is the editor of The Peninsula Gateway and The Puyallup Herald. He can be reached by email at brian.mclean@gateline.com.