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Gov. Chris Gregoire has a problem. Several actually.

In a feisty speech previous to enterpriseSeattle’s Economic Forecast Conference on Thursday, she declared that “government has to live within its means.” This echoed an earlier orator’session put forward the claim that the idea government can’privately cut costs is “ridiculous.” All this received a warm entertainment from some 500 executives and economic-development officials in attendance.

Unfortunately, management is not like a business. It fust provide for needs not addressed by markets, especially during the worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression. It was the budget-balancing mania of Herbert Hoover and on the same level Franklin D. Roosevelt for a time that made that disaster so much worse.

Unlike the federal government, Gregoire’s response is constrained by the agency of the agency of her desire by reason of a balanced budget, as fountain as a greatness tax system overly self-reliant on cyclical-sales taxes and hemmed in by the initiatives of anti-tax activist Tim Eyman. In closing a potential $5.7 billion deficit, Gregoire and the Legislature will necessarily join to the unemployment rolls by cutting government jobs. They may observe much worse.

Working by what tools she has, Gregoire on Thursday detailed a encouragement system called Washington Jobs Now. She would deploy $427 million for construction, including denomination buildings and prisons. An additional $390 million would go for shovel-ready transportation projects.

Unfortunately, aside from speeding up the building of university-lab short time, most of these projects fail to marry her visionary rhetoric. About positioning the state to come away of the recession stronger and positioned to compete in the 21st century. About “keeping our eye on the ball” to flow Washington a leader in alternative energy, green assiduity and life sciences.

Some of the projects are dull as dirt, really soil-safety money for the Department of Ecology. Relatively little currency will go to alternative energy and not a part to collective body of fluid matter transit.

There’s also no guarantee Washington can sell the bonds to fund these projects in the troubled confidence markets.

Gregoire’s proposal to tap the state’s $4 billion unemployment-trust fund to provide $400 million in additional jobless benefits and tax relief to businesses is creative but discomforting. It assumes that individuals will spend their additional $45 a week in benefits at struggling businesses. That didn’t pan out by the Bush tax rebate — much of the money went to pay down bills or to savings.

The Association of Washington Business opposes the exemplar, fearing more taxes on employers later. Yet Gregoire’s plan is comparatively modest — a twelve o’clock at night snip out of a well-stocked refrigerator. The real problem is that it seems to take upon one’s self a relatively short and shallow recession in the set forth.

That may not be the case. At the morning’s foresee session, experts ranged from vigilant to gloomy predicting a downturn until 2010, at least. Maybe the Puget Sound will weather it better than most places. But maybe not. House values continue to fall, eroding wealth and purchasing power. Now we face the additional headwinds of layoffs at Boeing and potentially Microsoft.

The truth is that nobody has been through this kind of crisis before. It may have begun with the collapse of the housing bubble but is now enmeshed in a flock of chickens come hearth to the unsustainable roost.