Every now and again lawmakers focus on who's paying their wage.

House Democratic leaders announced yesterday that they're forgoing the new cost-of-living pay increase, a nice little surprise.

Granted, it's mostly symbolic. If all 253 members of America's Largest Full-Time State Legislature skip the pay increase, the savings will be somewhere north of a half-million dollars. In a year when all the other "illions" pouring from politicians' mouths seem to begin with a "b" or a "t," that's piddling. But it's encouraging to see a nod to the notion of shared sacrifice.

Rep. Dwight Evans, the Philadelphian who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, says this "is not about one-upmanship with the other party." He noted that there isn't money to grant state pensioners a cost-of-living increase; they haven't had one in five years because the cost would be in excess of $500 million a year for the next 20 years.

So Mr. Evans and others will suck it up this year, too. He, Speaker-designee Keith McCall of Carbon County, Majority Leader Todd Eachus of Luzerne County and Majority Whip Bill DeWeese announced they will not take the automatic 2.8 percent increase that lawmakers have been locked in to get this week. Later yesterday, six top Senate Republican leaders joined them in returning the money. And the Republicans renewed a call to slash $75 million from the General Assembly's "budget reserve account," a vast unaudited pool of at least $241 million that leaders have built up over time to spend on their caucuses.

We'll get more lawmakers to forgo pay raises before we see that fund disappear. Raises are the third rail of state politics because they're easily understood. Getting a raise in the neighborhood of $2,000, which would take the rank-and-file lawmaker to $78,315, is not what we want to hear when people are being laid off, retirement nest eggs are poached and the state faces a revenue shortfall that threatens to reach $2 billion.

Lawmakers also remember that the only one among them who voted against repealing the unconstitutional midterm pay raise of 2005 was the once invincible, now indictable Mike Veon of Beaver Falls, who went down hard in 2006.

Nobody wants to be like Mike.

Mandatory givebacks are another question. Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith, D-Chester, is sponsoring a bill to permanently eliminate the annual cost-of-living raise for lawmakers, members of the executive branch and about 1,000 state judges. Call that the un-COLA bill.

I don't believe we need an all-time ban. In ordinary circumstances, there should be no problem with judges' and lawmakers' salaries keeping up with inflation (though tying the COLA to Philadelphia's rate of inflation, rather than a statewide average, is too generous.)

Fixating on salaries alone is counterproductive. They're the tip of the fiscal iceberg, as that mammoth legislative slush fund shows.

Gov. Ed Rendell yesterday announced more budget cuts, pushing the total to $439 million, but much more is needed.

I've said this before to no avail, but how about shrinking the General Assembly to a size closer to the legislatures of Ohio and Illinois? They manage to govern with 132 and 177 lawmakers respectively, so why do we need 253?

Annual bills to shrink our wide body have gone nowhere, but the savings would be in the tens of millions of dollars each year. There could hardly be a better time to begin the long constitutional process required to right-size the Legislature.

Then there are the pensions. The dire straits of Detroit automakers and the proposed contract to raise Port Authority workers' retirement age to 60 have highlighted the nightmare of legacy costs. Well, get this: Pennsylvania lawmakers who qualify can begin receiving a full pension at age 50.

That's nuts. None of these solons needs to start collecting a pension at the age Mick Jagger was 15 summers ago. The Rolling Stones can still tour, and that pension deal has gotta go. Legislators should be no different from most state employees, who can't receive full retirement benefits until age 60 -- and even that seems at least a couple of years too low.

America is swimming in debt and taking on more daily. Yesterday's moves are welcome baby steps, but Pennsylvania has miles to go.