Thank goodness. The tie police are here to save the day.

With the state House lethargic from a seven-week recess amid yet another stalemate over an incomplete state budget, we had despaired that nothing important was getting done.

Luckily, The Associated Press has learned differently. On Saturday the AP revealed that, far from failing spectacularly at governing, state legislators are laser-focused on what really matters: the little things.

Complaints about dress code “scofflaws” reached such a critical mass in the House last week that the Republican leadership sent out a memo reminding legislators that men must wear a coat and tie.

Cue the pointed-and-entirely-deserved sarcasm.

“Thanks for reminding me that we work in an environment that cares more about appearance than substance,” responded Rep. Jake Wheatley, D-Allegheny County, in an email.

What can you say? Wheatley’s not wrong. And the optics of the House parliamentarian issuing a shot-across-the-bow over coats and ties when legislators have failed miserably at fulfilling one of their most basic constitutional obligations are ... less than generous.

That probably didn’t occur to Rep. Rick Saccone, R-Allegheny County, when he fired back at Wheatley with an email that doubled down on sartorial concerns. The chamber’s dress code projects “a sense of professionalism that impacts performance,” Saccone wrote, according to the AP.

If that’s true House members should consider a wholesale rewrite of the chamber’s dress code. Because their performance in recent years has been historically bad, and 2017 is no exception.

It’s now the third week of September and we still have no way to pay for a $32 billion budget that lawmakers approved three months ago. On Friday the state delayed $1.7 billion in payments to Medicaid insurers and the state’s school employees pension fund (PSERS) — the first in a series of rolling delays of payments state officials expect to continue if the budget stalemate isn’t ended.

“We seem more concerned about what folks wear on the floor than what we are doing or not doing on the floor and that’s a problem,” Wheatley wrote.

Enough of that. Let’s get back to the important stuff: suit coats and ties are clearly not having the desired impact on performance, so why not switch things up?

The chamber should experiment with a wide variety of dress codes: straw hats and overalls, red stick-on noses and gigantic shoes, rompers for men.

Legislators are going to have to cast a wide net here, because we need to know as soon as possible which uniforms precipitate complete and balanced state budgets with the greatest frequency.

Don’t forget, the little things matter.

Of course, point-of-fact, clowns wear ties too.