There’s another squabble in the Iowa Legislature, and we’ll readily admit that squabbling of this sort is the way democracy really happens — slow, but ostensibly keeps big mistakes from happening.

Today’s issue is funding of Iowa’s schools. A party-line vote Tuesday passed a budget giving schools $1.9 billion in 2005, including a $65 million basic funding increase and a $44 million check to cover last year’s in-flight budget cuts. The Republican-drafted bill didn’t undergo a public hearing, which angered Democrats.

2006 would see a $45 million basic funding increase, and the overwhelming feeling is that isn’t nearly enough — Gov. Tom Vilsack has announced he’ll veto the bill.

He’s right — education needs and deserves more money than Republicans are currently ready to give. But it’s also an irresponsible, if obvious, tactic for Democrats to say the majority party is against education simply because it’s trying to fit the school funding into the whole year’s budget.

Hey! There’s not nearly enough money for everything. It’s no secret.

What the Legislature has been asked to do is decide that education (and, it follows, education funding) is something Iowa can and ought to hang its proverbial hat on. And since no legislator with real re-election hopes can realistically ask to steal money from any of the state’s other programs running on life support, higher taxes — on things like cigarettes and consulting services — are probably the answer.

The rest of the story reads like any grade school playground argument: Baseless accusations; spiteful, arms-crossed lip-curled defiance; changing the subject upon the realization you’re wrong and arguments about the rules.

We’ve all seen the images of school ceilings crumbling, of first-graders sitting on floors in overcrowded classrooms, of teachers paying for school supplies from their personal checking accounts. The point is that education in Iowa will soon become a failure without more cash.

These heartstring-pulling images aside, logic suggests that teachers themselves know what they need — and what they can get by with.

In seriousness, Tuesday’s 10 hours of debate revealed that many, many teachers feel very, very strongly that the funding bill — which provides about half of the funding increase Vilsack asked for in 2006 and includes a wholly illogical provision about exactly how much money must be spent on textbooks and supplies each year — is a horrific plan.

For all his gruffness and occasional lack of tact, Vilsack is trying to be a real leader here with his veto. If bettering education takes higher taxes, so be it — the dangers to the quality of education posed by large class sizes created by teacher layoffs are real and substantial.