As seven DFL legislative leaders put on somber but steady faces Thursday to discuss with reporters the tatters recession is making of the state budget, Senate Finance Committee chair Dick Cohen stood conspicuously to one side.

He didn't join in as his fellow House and Senate partisans talked up how a $5.2 billion "challenge" is an opportunity for innovation, restructuring and reform. I've covered the St. Paul DFLer for 25 years. I don't think I've seen him look more glum.

My guess: The chief Senate steward of the state budget knows too much about its condition to engage in glib bravery. In fact, he told me as much earlier in the week.

What has befallen Minnesota, he said, is "a state of emergency." He's been through three previous state revenue shortfalls -- 2003, 1991 and the tail end of 1981-83. (Cohen was elected to the House in 1976, unelected in 1978, and returned in 1982 and thereafter.) None of them worried him as much as this one does.

The reasons: The recession's end is nowhere in sight. The state has no pots of money available to drain. A puny reserve fund will be gone well before June 30.

And government has been operating on a fraying shoestring ever since the tax cuts of 1999-2001 and the huge spending cuts of 2003. It's been teetering in and out of deficit ever since. Cohen has real doubt about the capacity of schools, colleges, courts, nursing homes and the rest to sustain big cuts without eroding their quality to a level Minnesotans will not recognize.

He's not angling for a tax increase, Cohen made clear. "You can't tax your way out of this." Even if GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty were not notoriously tax-averse, in this environment, DFLers would be, at least where the middle class is concerned. Most DFLers also understand that they can't talk about boosting job growth and pile taxes on employers at the same time.

An attorney in the off-season, Cohen might have made his living as a political soothsayer. He's quick to see a politically acceptable path out of legislative gridlock and to spot rising stars early in their ascents. It's no surprise that he was an early and active backer of Barack Obama.

What bothers him, he said, is that this time, he doesn't see an obvious way out of trouble. But he recommends taking cues from the president-elect.

"We should take a page from President-elect Obama," Cohen said. "We should lay out for the state what we need to do and why we need to do it, and implement it." No game playing, no tallying of debating points, no partisan bashing for its own sake. The Legislature should just deliver direct, clear, open governance.

When I allowed that DFL legislators haven't always behaved that way during the Pawlenty years, he didn't disagree.

"If we handle ourselves in a business-as-usual way, it will have some real negative repercussions for us," he said. "A continual cat-and-mouse game with the governor will not work this year. Our problems are so enormous, and the contrast with the president's leadership style will be so significant, that Minnesotans won't stand for it."

That advice came to mind Thursday as Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller took a verbal shot at the state agency that administers economic development programs and its "leadership." It's headed by former Pawlenty chief of staff and former GOP legislator Dan McElroy.

That agency's work may indeed be in need of repriming as it seeks to revive job growth in this state. Prominent among its programs during the Pawlenty years have been tax breaks targeted at some -- but not all -- rural manufacturers. That JOBZ program has come under criticism for playing favorites among employers. The department has also been faulted for neglecting small-town microentrepreneurs.

But all of that amounts to one rather small tree in the forest of state programs -- and the forest is on fire. The Legislature's top leaders need to pay attention to the forest right now, not the trees.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She's at lsturdevant@startribune.com.