In 1969, Vietnam War-weary Americans, including hundreds of thousands in Pennsylvania, watched as disagreement raged over the shape of the table that would be used for the Paris Peace Talks.

North Vietnam favored a circular table, around which all parties would appear to be equal in importance. South Vietnam argued on behalf of a rectangular table, contending that only a rectangle could show two distinct sides to the conflict.

The compromise eventually reached had North Vietnam and South Vietnam representatives sitting at a circular table, with members representing all other parties sitting at individual square tables around them.

Fast-forward 40 years to 2009 where the Pennsylvania budget conference committee — the lawmakers given the task of trying to effect a breakthrough in the 2009-10 fiscal morass — spent much of Wednesday, the committee's first meeting day, squabbling about minor issues, including who would be committee chairman and where the panel would hold subsequent meetings.

A month having passed without a new state budget in place, thousands of state workers not being paid, and many state programs — or local programs that rely heavily on state funding — fearing the worst or already operating under precarious fiscal circumstances, and these six individuals, charged with such an important job, chose to waste time rather than immediately start to work.

The squabbling marked another low amid a plethora of regrettable lows that have marked this year's budget exercise.

Gov. Ed Rendell was right on Thursday in his decision to break up the conference committee, although, technically, the committee merely suspended deliberations — if, in fact, this sorry example of governmental performance could be termed "deliberations."

Members of the panel — indeed, the entire General Assembly and the Rendell administration — should be embarrassed over their unwillingness to enter Wednesday's talks hellbent on achieving compromise, rather than continuing the confrontational budget environment that has deadlocked the state government for months.

If state taxpayers hadn't reached the boiling point prior to Wednesday, they should have reached it upon hearing the news about the farcical, and unconscionable, conference committee goings-on.

"Four hours later, the sides were no closer together" — that's the way one Pittsburgh newspaper described the situation.

And both the Democrats and Republicans are responsible for what didn't transpire.

"Bickering about these procedural matters . . . is making a mockery of the process," said Sen. Jay Costa, ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, during Wednesday's meeting. "We need to get to the heart of the matter."

But neither side showed a willingness to do that and opted instead to continue the budget negotiations mockery — much like the Paris Peace Talks.

The primary negotiations leading to the 1973 Paris Peace Accords did not occur at the peace conference, but resulted from secret negotiations between U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese politburo member Le Duc Tho.

Each day that passes in Harrisburg seems to cry out for some genuine leaders to step forward to produce a budget peace accord capable of bringing Pennsylvania's current crisis to an end.

The Paris Peace Talks involved much propaganda; the Pennsylvania Budget War of 2009 has been rife with partisanship.

Neither is the stuff from which a solution to a difficult issue can be found.

Pennsylvania lawmakers and the governor should have figured that out long before now.

Shame on all of them.