The Senate continues Gov. Bev Perdue’s gimmick-based budgeting, but on a slightly smaller scale. It only expands the stimulus-packed budget by $200 million over fiscal year 2010’s budget. General Fund and stimulus spending combined equal $20.6 billion. Total appropriations from all sources will again be around $50 billion.

Spending also gets unloaded onto a number of other funds you never knew existed, like the Mercury Pollution Prevention Fund, the Telecommunications Relay Trust Fund, the Solid Waste Management Trust Fund, and the Natural Heritage Trust Fund.

The Senate does acknowledge the loss of revenue from the temporary repeal of the death tax instead of trying to hide it in the Savings Reserve Account. But the Senate budget also includes roughly $50 million in corporate welfare payments tax carve-outs ($10 million for a bill to be named later).

Whatever good ideas there are specific program savings pale in comparison to the utter irresponsibility of adding fuel to next year’s fiscal bonfire.