The state is running nearly $500 million behind projections on tax revenue.

In response, Gov. Tom Corbett ordered a spending freeze of almost $157 million, with the largest amounts coming from state prisons, child welfare agencies and higher education.

And the state Department of Public Welfare is imposing a new rule that blocks people with more than $2,000 in savings from getting food stamps.

The Great Recession may be over, but it's hard to tell that in Pennsylvania. The state's economy is still limping through a barely-there recovery.

A new revenue source for state government would help, wouldn't it?

So why doesn't the Corbett administration do what polls show a majority of Pennsylvanians want, and call for a tax on the Marcellus Shale gas drilling industry?

The spate of bad budget news this month clearly warns us that even more painful spending cuts will have to be made in 2012-13 — on the heels of slashes in Gov. Corbett's first budget.

Don't be surprised if the ax falls on social services and other programs that help average Pennsylvanians, at a time when unemployment remains high, health insurance costs are soaring and homeowners are still struggling to pay the mortgage.

We contend that a reasonable tax on the lucrative Marcellus Shale industry is a logical and necessary move to keep the budget in the black without chopping critical programs.

Oh, the Republican governor has proposed an "impact fee" on drillers. But the revenue for the state would be minimal, at best; the impact fee would be imposed at the county level and would be aimed at paying for the local costs of drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation.

And, as the Capitolwire.com news service has pointed out, because Gov. Corbett and some Republican legislators have signed Grover Norquist's no-tax-hike pledge, a shale impact fee likely would have to be accompanied by equal tax cuts.

Useless, in other words.

Now, if the governor and GOP lawmakers who control both houses of the General Assembly would have had the sense to refuse tying their own hands by signing the Norquist pledge, Pennsylvania might have some relief for the budget crunch while the economy heals.

Or if Gov. Corbett and the GOP leadership decided to be statesmen and -women instead of politicians, they'd have the intestinal fortitude to admit they were wrong to knuckle under to Mr. Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and do what's best for Pennsylvania instead of what's best for their re-election prospects.

In general, we agree that tax increases are a bad idea in a lousy economy. But Pennsylvania is the only state with a big Marcellus natural gas reserve that doesn't tax drilling. The industry has said in the past that it wouldn't be opposed to a tax.

So arguing, as Gov. Corbett's supporters sometimes have done, that a tax would throw a wrench into the gas-drilling job engine, doesn't make sense.

We suspect that the governor's reluctance to tax the drilling industry has more to do with ideological purity — and, the cynic in us adds, the hefty contributions that drilling companies made to the Corbett campaign fund — than with serious fears about choking off the Marcellus gold rush in the northern tier of counties.

The state budget is being squeezed in every direction, as the lagging tax collections reported last week show. With the deadline for the governor's next budget presentation looming, there's still time to get real about the state of the state — by tapping into the Marcellus boom.

Who deserves a break — multimillion-dollar drilling companies or struggling families with $2,000 in the bank?