If you’re wondering what I was doing in the basement of the State House last Wednesday, frankly, so was I. But after attending my first political rally several weeks ago, so many of you encouraged me to keep getting involved that I thought I’d give a House Committee on Finance meeting a whirl.

Why I picked a budget session to attend, I’m not sure, except to say that with all the ink (most of it red, I’m sorry to say) that’s being given to the financial situation here in the state, I think we’ve got a lot at stake. The $151 million deficit this fiscal year is projected by the Governor’s office to reach $384 million by next. It finally dawned on me. How deep does the hole have to get before I tune in? What cataclysmic thing has to happen before I pay attention?

Not that I had time for any of this. I didn’t and I don’t. But I decided to carve out an hour or so to try to learn something while I stood there at the back of Room 35, waiting for the 1 p.m. meeting to begin. If the chatting and chuckling in the room was any indication, the only sense of urgency belonged to me and it was mostly due to the limited amount of quarters I could fish out of my purse for the parking meter.

Finally, at 1:38 by my watch, someone announced that the chairman had been attending another important meeting but was on his way. Wonder what the cost was of all those people sitting around the room? Never mind.

Not long after the announcement, the meeting began. But the first thing on the agenda was not exactly what I was expecting. The committee wasn’t talking about decreases in spending. Far from it. Neither were they discussing difficult cuts or big reductions. No. The topic to start off my very first budget meeting was borrowing. Something called tax anticipation notes. I don’t like the sound of that. Do you?

As if someone at the front of the room sensed my queasiness, he introduced the subject by explaining why we might want to borrow at a time like this by making this comparison to our personal lives.

It’s like at home when grocery day comes before payday. You hit the kids’ piggy bank.

Really? In his house maybe. Certainly not in mine.

Maybe you’ve been through it before. I know we have. You lose a job. A big freelance project you were counting on doesn’t come through. And all of a sudden your bills add up to more than your income. The clock starts tick, tick, ticking and you’ve got to come up with a plan. Think. Fast. What do you do?

Granted, I’m no expert, but what worked for us was to stop. Stop going out to eat. Stop going out to the movies. Stop taking trips here and there unless they were absolutely necessary. Stop buying Barbie dolls and video games and the latest fashion sweaters and all the other things that we really can get by without.

I know. I know. My little household is simple compared to the complexities and the needs of an entire state. But yet, the economic advisor who attended the meeting put up bar chart after graph after pie chart to show us the repercussions of borrowing more money and how what we do now will affect the state for years to come. Things like how the interest on the loan will eat up more and more of our revenues each year. And how that affects Rhode Island’s bond rating. And how a lower bond rating makes the interest rate we’re charged on loans go up.

As it turned out, I had to leave the meeting before it was over because I had to pick my daughter up from school, and, yes, there was the little matter of the parking meter. So maybe the committee got into talking about cuts. Or maybe they’re saving that discussion for another day. If they are, I’d like to hear it.

Because the idea of our state making ends meet now by “breaking into our kids’ piggy banks” is not something I want to see happen.

Rita Lussier can be reached at ReetsAL@aol.com or by mail c/o Features Department, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain Street, Providence, RI 02902.