Welcome back, state representatives. Now please get to work.

Members of the state House returned to Harrisburg today, to chairs that haven’t cooled off since they left on July 22, with an unfunded state budget still waiting for revenue.

You’d never know it, the way legislators are acting. Members of the House have been out of session for the past seven weeks, as pressure has been mounting to actually come up with a plan to pay for the state’s $32 billion budget — technically passed “on time,” thank goodness, but to what effect?

As we’ve written before, a state budget without money to pay for it isn’t really a state budget. Similarly, a state legislature that walks away from fulfilling one of its most basic responsibilities can’t be accused of being a serious body of lawmakers.

Yes, a group of rank-and-file House members last week presented an alternative — the so-called Taxpayers’ Budget — to the Senate’s revenue plan. But sadly, it mostly amounts to raiding special funds that pay for things like 911 call centers, transportation infrastructure and environmental cleanup and preservation.

The plan’s authors claim it won’t result in program cuts, but Gov. Tom Wolf strongly disagrees and even Republicans in the state Senate are “fearful” that it will harm agricultural, environmental and transportation projects across the state, according to the caucus’ spokeswoman.

In other words, the architects of this latest plan apparently spent a lot of time figuring out which pots of money they were allowed to raid, and very little time wondering whether or not they actually should.

We can’t fault them for trying, but this is the kind of work that legislators should be doing in January, February and March.

It’s also the kind of thing that the chamber should be doing while in full session, not during an inexplicable two-month hiatus that puts lawmakers in a time crunch and with only three days left until the state’s main checking account runs out of money on Sept. 15.

That’s not the kind of time management that projects seriousness and inspires confidence. And with one non-starter of a revenue plan already under House members’ belts from July, forgive us if we’re not overflowing with praise for the chamber’s budget-building efforts.

Our advice has been, and remains, very simple: stop relying on accounting tricks, short-term fixes, borrowing and sin taxes to balance the budget, and get serious. Start early, stay late, and don’t walk away from Harrisburg while a budget stalemate persists.

All that seems like common sense to us — and a much better way of protecting taxpayers than putting the fiscal health of Pennsylvania into doubt year after year.