As Bremerton reckons with the possibility of reducing its teacher corps by 16, state Sen. Phil Rockefeller, a Democrat from Bainbridge Island, sounds mystified.

“I don’t know that we have much choice here,” he told the Bremerton Patriot regarding Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed budget. “I’m not sure what else remains.”

In other words, our leaders are telling us if we get hungry, the only solution is to chop off our legs and eat them.

At present we are up to our elbows in a sorry economy partly caused by the greedy and negligent, those who made themselves even richer while our country flirted with disaster.

And our leaders, by avoiding the subject, imply it is impolite to suggest that those who profited during our country’s fleecing be asked to help pay to undo some of the damage they caused.

It’s unfair to target Rockefeller, but his attitude — that the only way to balance a budget is through cuts — isn’t original. He shares this view with the governor and many Democrats and Republicans.

However, it is disingenuous.

Raising taxes may be unpopular, especially when our leaders so consistently fail to make a case for the long-term and potentially insurmountable damage of cutting programs like education, but it at least deserves a mention.