Not so fast.

State lawmakers will have at least $300 million less to play with than was projected just three months ago. Beginning in the fall, tax revenue began to taper off. A national slump in the housing sector and a resulting credit crunch slowed the economy. Now Utah home sales have dipped. The state has seen a 1 percent increase in unemployment.

The effect of that economic softening is still rippling through the Beehive State.

Plus, the federal government's attempt to kick-start the national economy has slammed Utah's coffers. Tax breaks for businesses will mean $65 million less for the state, and interest rate cuts will slice another $200 million from what Utah expected to take in.

Right off the bat, that should be a warning to legislators to be cautious about peering into the future. An economic storm can blow in fast. Then it's much harder to cut back on spending, or to find money for vital projects.

It's true that state leaders still are looking at a surplus of $776 million, the third-highest ever. But the base budget includes money for education growth and raises for teachers, leaving $613 million available.

Capitol Hill leaders say they'll rein in the chicken-in-every-pot spending fantasies. Flush times are tempting. But a slowing stream of money should remind everyone at the Capitol to tackle only the items that are really important to Utahns, and that are genuinely in the bailiwick of state government.

Second, we don't see that the Legislature is ready to solve many urgent problems this session anyway. An important task force studying health care reform won't report its major initiatives until the fall.

And at one point, legislators talked up tax cuts. The governor wanted to ease up on tax reductions this year, especially until the effect of the most recent cuts can be measured. That sounds like a better idea than ever, and we expect calls for tax cuts to grow ever more faint.

Utah has some really big-ticket items coming at it like freight trains: perhaps not at top speed, but with tremendous force. One is the tsunami of students heading this way. Already education advocates complain about Utah's low spending per pupil and overcrowded classrooms, but they haven't seen anything yet. Enrollment will grow by more than 200,000 students by 2022. In Utah County alone, school enrollment will grow by more than 57,000.

Since the voucher movement was defeated, we haven't heard of any good ideas of how to find the estimated $6 billion needed to build schools across the state, or how to raise the more than $4 billion needed every year to fund public education by 2022. There seems no way to dodge those costs, so legislators must remember how much public schools will eat up in the future.

Don't forget highways. The Utah Department of Transportation estimates the state will need to spend at least $30 billion on roads between now and 2030. Without good highways, traffic tie-ups will slowly suffocate the state's economy.

These are just the basics. The silver lining in the cloud of slowing revenues may be that the Legislature may be encouraged to start cutting back now.