By now you’ve probably shaken your head at some (or all) of legislators’ ideas for balancing a $32 billion state budget that is still $2 billion out of wack more than a month after being passed.

What you likely haven’t groused over yet — because you don’t know about it — is that legislators have quietly moved to make sure they can continue to do this as much as they like. And without all those pesky questions about whether it should be legal for them to continue paying themselves while failing to perform one of their most basic duties.

The provision we’re talking about was tacked on to the state Senate’s revenue package late last month, and would give the General Assembly more power to unilaterally borrow money to fund lawmakers’ own actions during a budget impasse like the historic, four-month stalemate that occurred two years ago.

The provision would change the state’s Fiscal Code and give both the House and the Senate explicit authority to borrow money to pay their own salaries, benefits and bills if the legislatures’ reserves run out because of ongoing budget negotiations.

First let’s make something abundantly clear. Lawmakers may be able to claim they passed an on-time 2017 budget and be technically correct. But a $32 billion spending plan that doesn’t lay out how to pay for itself is not a state budget.

It’s a sham jammed through the Republican-controlled General Assembly and given a tacit nod of approval by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf because neither side wanted to risk another budget debacle in the run-up to the 2018 election cycle.

That sham was already offensive to the millions of Pennsylvanians who show up to their jobs every day and must actually produce results to collect a paycheck.

Now legislators want to enshrine for themselves the power to unilaterally borrow money on the taxpayers’ dime to pay themselves regardless of whether they can perform one of their most basic, constitutionally-mandated functions: turn in a balanced, on-time state budget.

We thought Harrisburg’s record of corruption, tone-deafness and ineptitude had reached terminal heights in recent years. But every time we turn around our elected officials seem to find a new way to disappoint and disgust us.

If legislators want to adopt a “better safe than sorry” approach to tough budgeting cycles, there are many ways they could go about it. They could start budget negotiations early, make them bicameral, or actually make the tough decisions they were elected to make. They could replenish the state’s Rainy Day Fund, which has dwindled from $755 million in 2008 to less than $300,000 today.

They could even pass legislation that would dock or suspend the pay of legislators and the state’s executive branch in the event that a full and complete state budget hasn’t been passed. That might actually prompt legislators to get something done.

Instead, they’re trying to further insulate themselves from feeling any of the financial pain and uncertainty they now routinely inflict on the commonwealth’s schools, public employees and social service providers.

There ought to be a law against this — literally. We shouldn’t be setting ourselves up to fund future state budget impasses.