After 176 days — and with about seven hours to spare — the Indiana House finally approved a state budget Tuesday afternoon. The Senate, something of an afterthought in this year’s budget battle between House Speaker Pat Bauer and Gov. Mitch Daniels, soon gave its assent.

And so, thankfully, lawmakers avoided what would have been an unnecessary disaster, the first state government shutdown since the 19th century.

That it took six months for the legislature to meet its constitutional duty to approve a budget speaks more to lawmakers’ taste for political melodrama than to holding fast to conviction. Yes, the differences between the governor and House Democrats — particularly on education spending — were real. But those differences could and should have been worked out during the regular session in April.

This month’s special session, which lasted nearly three weeks, ended with the House Speaker doing what he clearly had to do from the start — allow a vote on a responsible two-year budget that safeguards adequate reserves. Bauer never had enough support to win a straight-up vote — the budget eventually passed the House 62-36 — so he blocked and delayed as long as possible.

What of Democrats’ complaint that schools won’t receive enough money? It’s important to remember that overall education spending will actually increase over the next two years, despite a sharp drop in state revenues that has forced deep cuts on most other areas of state government.

It’s true that districts where enrollment has declined, including Indianapolis Public Schools, will receive less money. That’s not an easy reality for anyone to have to accept. But in almost every other sector, when an enterprise shrinks in size, its budget contracts as well. Why should school districts be different? IPS instructed more than 42,000 students a decade ago; this past school year it enrolled about 34,000. Yet, its per-pupil spending has continued a rapid climb — topping more than $13,500 a student during the 2007-2008 school year, according to the state Department of Education. The accusation that the taxpayers of this city and state haven’t supported IPS simply doesn’t add up.

Faced with the drop of $2 billion in projected state revenues since December, and amid the deepest recession in decades, the General Assembly and the governor had only one responsible choice — craft a fiscally conservative budget that would avoid setting up the state for long-term financial problems. They belatedly accomplished that task Tuesday.