After two months of talking, negotiating and behind-closed-doors meetings on ways to patch up Wisconsin's $527 million budget deficit, state legislative leaders and Gov. Jim Doyle have yet to reach an agreement.

And now, as the calendar turns toward summer, the "dire warnings" of what will happen without an agreement are starting to crop up.

State budget director David Schmiedicke warned last week that $100 million in payments to local governments, schools and others would have to be delayed come August because the state cupboards would be bare of cash. And Gov. Jim Doyle, meanwhile, warned that the Department of Transportation may have to hold off on awarding highway construction projects soon if a budget pact is not reached. The DOT is slated to issue some $261 million in construction contracts this spring.

Small wonder that highway construction workers lined the hallways at the Capitol early this week when lawmakers convened for budget discussions: their work is on the line.

Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, and Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, reportedly have a framework of a budget agreement - although its details have not been announced and Gov. Doyle hasn't signed on to it.

And that "framework" of a budget patch agreement got a dose of cold water Tuesday from Assembly Minority Leader Jim Kreuser, D-Kenosha, who said it would get only a handful of votes from Assembly Democrats which might not be sufficient for passage.

Kreuser was critical of provisions for delaying $125 million in school aid payments by a month to push it into the next budget and the proposal to refinance the state's tobacco settlement to raise another $247 million.

We agree with Kreuser philosophically on the school aid delay - that's simply an accounting gimmick that pushes the state's fiscal woes down the road. Sooner or later they will have to be dealt with one of two ways - raising taxes or cutting spending. The squabble over how much to raise by refinancing the tobacco settlement is also a short-term fix that does nothing for the state's future fiscal health and bond ratings.

And, frankly, we're surprised to learn that the proposal for a hospital tax that would free up $125 million in state funds by leveraging $420 million in federal Medicaid funding to the state has reportedly been dropped from the budget patch package. That idea is backed by the Wisconsin Hospital Association and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce who have switched positions on the issue, but is still opposed by Assembly Republicans.

Of course, the final leg of this dispute is how much to cut spending. The latest numbers we have seen go something like this: Assembly Republicans want to lop $300 million from the budget, but have not delineated where those cuts would be and prefer to hand the scalpel for that work to the governor; Gov. Doyle is urging $87 million in cuts and the Senate has proposed $40 million in trims.

In a state budget that contains some $7 billion in spending, it would seem to us that the Senate trims are barely a scratch. A true compromise would fall somewhere between Doyle's proposal and the GOP one - but without tapping the state's rainy day fund.

There are solutions here. They can be found in compromise - in splitting the difference.

More and more that seems to be a lost art in our state Capitol. We would urge Gov. Doyle and state lawmakers to skip Act II: The dire warnings of impending doom, and move on to Act III: Resolution and finale. We all know it's coming, so get to it.