Beginning today, the 104 members of the Utah Legislature will spend their annual general session trying to strain a new state budget out of a river running high with red ink. Along with encouragement to our lawmakers, we offer condolences. Sisyphus had an easier task.

The forbidding budgetary challenge facing the 75 members of the House of Representatives and the 29-member Senate offers them a reduced number of options, and that makes their choices all the more critical. For in the balance hangs the future welfare of Utah's critically underfunded public and higher education systems, its social services and transportation networks, and much else besides. None of us is without stake in the outcome.

Throughout America, the Great Recession has shredded the job and housing markets, plundered individual pocketbooks and drained retirement accounts. As we all know, Utah has been no bystander to the economic chaos. Many who once prospered or lived paycheck to paycheck are now jobless and, in some cases, newly homeless. Some are working at new jobs for less money and fewer benefits. Hundreds of thousands are deeply in debt or bankrupt. Businesses are equally hard hit.

All of the above have contributed to an approximate $700 million drop in state revenues that has hammered public and higher education budgets along with virtually every other department of state government. With the deficit expected to worsen, the Legislature must pick from a variety of options to raise new revenue. (See our editorial of yesterday, "Legislators' ax: Tax hikes could save education.") Or, as some legislators favor, to stand pat and hope for a quick recovery. That, in our view, would make a dire situation catastrophic.

So, yes, over the session's 45 days the Legislature's Republican supermajority will make critical budget choices that will affect Utahns of all ages. Responsibility for the outcome, good or bad, will be theirs, and we urge potential voters in this election year to keep a tally for future reference.

But as the gavel goes down today with nothing yet decided, we also feel it appropriate to point out that the Legislature is a collection of part-timers who work very hard for their constituents. The best of them strive for true statesmanship. That is, to practice the art of political compromise, the necessary requirement if they are to work on behalf of all Utahns, not just that majority of voters who elected them.

We like to believe that we are realists. Nevertheless, we urge these 104 in all sincerity to place a higher value on statemanship than on partisanship or rigid ideology during these challenging days before the gavel falls again in March.