Last Tuesday's voting marked the midpoint in Pennsylvania's two-year legislative cycle. For the next 12 months, nothing will happen in Harrisburg without incumbent lawmakers first thinking hard about their own looming re-election races and the contest to replace Gov. Ed Rendell.

The conventional wisdom is that means not much at all is likely to happen.

Campaign considerations - and the likelihood that tax revenues will continue to be anemic - raise the distinct possibility that the recently concluded Great Budget Drama of '09 was just the first act in a two-part battle of wills.

It's not as if there is no ambition to accomplish things over the next 12 months.

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For one, the budget impasse never really ended, because negotiators failed to work out the fine points of legalizing table games. Lawmakers also may do something to cushion the blow to consumers as caps come off electric rates and the utilities raise bills, although indications are that any relief would be modest.

Many want to address the pension crisis - a time bomb set to go off in just a couple of years that is likely to saddle state government and school districts around Pennsylvania with crippling new financial obligations.