For the fifth year in a row, Pennsylvania’s leadership has missed the state Constitution’s deadline for passage of an annual budget.

Many at the moment are singling out the state Senate for this dereliction — and we will agree state senators should still be in Harrisburg, working on resolving outstanding issues and ready to vote.

But the Senate was in session for much of the past year — and during that time, Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Democratic majority in the state House simply were unrealistic about how much money the state can spend.

The initial proposal by Shapiro, as both our editorials and Republican lawmakers noted, nearly exhausted the state’s emergency reserves and still relied on “revenue” from taxes or fees that don’t exist.

To reiterate, the proposed budget offered by Shapiro spent money from legalizing and applying taxes to marijuana despite the fact that recreational marijuana is illegal in our state, and took a similar approach to other revenue streams based on fantasy, not what our legislature has actually done.

It would be like a person applying for a better-paying job, then buying a house based on that job’s salary before they were even interviewed.

And in taking this approach, our state has spent weeks, if not months, neglecting the necessity of reappraising how we fund public education and how we can provide relief to property owners and other taxpayers struggling under the excesses of our current Pennsylvania tax climate.

Republicans in our legislature have strived to bring practicality to the process, partly out of well-founded fears that increased spending invariably lead to higher taxes — a burden that employers and families, we agree, cannot carry.

We hope by the time state senators have returned to Harrisburg that a more practical budget, drafted in recognition of how much revenue the state truly can expect and an acceptance that more taxes and fees will only leave our state’s future on less stable ground, can be negotiated.

What is at risk if the state doesn’t is government spending without revenue and costs that send employers and families fleeing for states on more realistic fiscal footing — placing the viability or sustainability of our own communities in greater peril.