For months the talk at the State House has been about hard decisions and tough choices. From Governor Carcieri down to the newest legislator, the message has been that Rhode Island's economy is in the dumpster, tax revenues are falling and businesses are not creating new jobs. Then, abruptly that was all but forgotten.

So this was the year that state government finally had to face up to a whopping deficit, slash programs, and live within its means. City and town governments and school districts would have to tighten their belts and cut expenditures to the bone.

Then President Obama won approval of the nearly $1 trillion federal stimulus program. Rhode Island and every other state got a share of this federal largesse.

And suddenly, the state didn't have to make those tough choices anymore. Carcieri released a budget proposal last week that uses this federal money to solve the state's short-problems and keep government running.

The governor's budget is also makes some startling assumptions, especially in education. He has proposed cutting by $68 million the state's contribution to Rhode Island schools and using federal money to make up the difference. The federal stimulus money is not supposed to be used to supplant state funds.

So Rhode Island must now beg the federal government to carve out an exception from the rules and grant the state a waiver in order to balance the state budget.

Republican Carcieri was roundly criticized by politicians from both parties for using this one-time federal gift to fill the state's gaping budget hole without having any plan for what to do when the money runs out.

Democrats, from Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts to House and Senate budget leaders blasted the governor for short-sightedness and postponing the day of painful reckoning.

It is easy to hammer Carcieri, but the Democrats are not doing themselves proud. None of them have stepped up and in detail laid out how they would solve the state's budget mess without resorting to chewing up the federal windfall.

Carcieri is in the twilight of his governorship. He is at the end of his term limit and he won't be around after January, 2011. His job approval ratings in the recent Brown University public approval survey were just 38 percent, his all-time low.

Yet, at least Carcieri has opened a conversation about changing some of the ways the state does business. He has been an advocate of trimming pension and health care benefits to state workers. State government has substantially fewer employees than when he took office. And he has undertaken the most serious study of state tax policy in decades.

Rhode Island has been down this road before. In the early part of this decade, the state used millions in federal tobacco settlement money to fill a budget hole, a notorious one-time fix.

Human conditions change, but human nature doesn't. State government will cross the deficit bridge only when it has to, if ever. Let's just change the license plate motto from Ocean State to the We'll Muddle Through State.