Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This has become a modern-day proverb, accepted nowhere more than in Harrisburg.

Already in the eighth month of this fiscal year, we’re still waiting on the 2015-16 state budget, which amounted to nearly $33 billion when first proposed by Gov. Tom Wolf in February 2015.

His plan included a raft of tax and spending increases, reflecting the first-year Democrat’s desire to boost spending for education and services while eliminating a chronic budget deficit that Wolf attributed — with some justice — to Republican accounting gimmicks and underfunding.

Wolf got himself elected on promises of a different kind of governing. But the Republican Legislature balked at the largess Wolf said he needs to turn his campaign promises into reality.

The net result is a budget process in tatters — remnants of a $30.3 billion Republican budget proposal, parts of which were vetoed by Wolf in early January.

This Frankenstein conglomeration of a budget is the worst offering of both parties.

And here we go again, anticipating the governor to do the same thing for his 2016-17 budget — propose tax and spending hikes — and expecting a different result — that the Republicans will go along.

The complicated budget mess compounds today as Wolf delivers his second budget address. Wolf is expected to demand more of the same tax increases next fiscal year even as the current year’s budget remains in limbo. Wolf will propose even more spending, especially for education, on top of the proposals he has been unable so far to ramrod through the Legislature.

The scenario resembles a video game that goes ever faster as the targets stack up — and a “game over” anvil hovers perilously overhead.

The more sobering realization is that we Pennsylvanians continue to plumb the depths of government dysfunction.

If we already have two proposed budgets in play, what’s to stop us from having a third budget one year from now?

And if government continues to function, why bother adopting a budget at all?

The answer should be obvious, but it isn’t. This is insanity.

Gov. Wolf was on the money with his campaign slogan, that we need a new way of governing.

We suggest that the governor and legislature get the 2015-16 budget in place before they even propose a 2016-17 budget.

With the fiscal year essentially two-thirds over. it’s time to forgo the usual budgeting process governments use: deciding how much they want to spend and then tax accordingly. Rather, they should set their spending based on how much money they have on hand and anticipate by year’s end. After all, how do you go back and tax the public in 2017 for money spent in 2016?

There also should be a substantial penalty for failing to finish the budget. A definite deadline is needed too, since the lawmakers ignore the official deadline of July 1, the first day of the fiscal year.

If you think about it, there is a deadline and penalty: April 26, the date of the spring primary.

Pennsylvania voters, the ultimate arbiters in this scenario, can and should be willing to remove legislators of either or both political parties for this continued negligence.

When that anvil drops, they should feel it.