The Golden Dome loves a good show, and this week offers lots of diversions as the legislature returns from its two-week break to face up to the music of a slumping budget.

On Monday, House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) and his wife Carol are scheduled to appear on the Fox and Friends Morning Show to discuss their respective candidacies for governor and lieutenant governor. There won’t be many Democratic candidates around the country this year who will be able to say that.

On Tuesday, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist will be the featured speaker at a No New Taxes rally on the Capitol steps. This is going on in conjunction with the Americans for Prosperity Georgia chapter’s day at the legislature, so there should be lots of conservative activists about.

The pent-up energies of several committees should also provide some interesting moments. On Monday, the Senate Public Safety Committee will hear the bill which prevents minors from driving while texting, Senate Natural Resources will hear Chip Pearson’s reservoir expansion bill, and a House Ways and Means subcommittee will hear House Majority Whip Ed Lindsey’s property tax assessment cap bills. Then there’s the mammoth transportation funding bill which is likely to be brought to a vote before a House subcommittee Monday.

But hanging like a gloomy cloud over all this legislative pageantry is the most anticipated – and dreaded – development of the week: Gov. Sonny Perdue’s announcement, either Monday or Tuesday, of the February revenue numbers, and Perdue’s revision of his budget estimate. The two-week break was about coming to terms with how bad the budget crisis is, but the final hard evidence of its severity will be these numbers.

“If it’s negative, it’s horrible. If it’s flat, that’s not good,” Alan Essig, director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said in a briefing on the budget for reporters Friday.

Those, however, are the only likely outcomes. Last February, revenues fell 38 percent. It would, indeed, be horrible if the year-over-year numbers fell even further, and most of the body language last week seemed to indicate the numbers will be fairly flat. But no dramatic turn into positive territory seems in the offing.

That leaves the lawmakers in the same, or worse, shape with the budget than before the two-week break. Already, there has been some talk of another recess to deal with the problem, but as the days get warmer and longer, the sentiment for stretching out the decision-making process is going to get thinner.

House Speaker David Ralston is scheduled to meet with the AFP Georgia group Tuesday, and Senate leaders have made plain their anti-tax sentiments. But this week’s budget numbers are likely to make it even harder for the legislators simply to cut their way back to blue ink. Sooner or later, they are likely to have to come up with some combination of cuts and enhancements to get the state into next year - which, the experts say, is when the budget problems will really get serious.

The dire outcomes suggested by the University System last week aren’t going to happen in FY ’11, Essig said. But they could come to pass in FY ’12.

“This isn’t a one-year problem,” he said. “This is a broad shift in how much revenue the state has that will take years and years of normal growth to come out of.”