Oregon’s constitution is clear: Revenue-raising measures must begin in the state House and must be approved by a three-fifths supermajority in each house. Too bad Democrats in the Legislature are unwilling to play by that rule.

Thus this week they’ve taken a bill approved in the Senate. In the House, they added a series of tax increases. And that, House leaders say, will allow the state to continue offering tax credits to low-income families and the disabled. Those cuts were set to expire.

The move is technically legal, the Legislature’s lawyers say. The measure, Senate Bill 925, will include tax increases, to be sure. At the same time, however, it will include offsetting tax credits, making it revenue neutral.

And, if it’s revenue neutral no supermajority is required.

We won’t question the constitutionality of what the Democrats are doing. Legislative lawyers are far more knowledgeable about that sort of thing than we are.

At the same time, that doesn’t make it right.

Less than 20 years ago Oregonians amended the state constitution to require that three-fifths majority vote on revenue-raising bills. They did so by some 60,000 votes, no small margin and surely not one made up solely of Republicans.

Nor, we suspect, did those roughly 350,000 voters who favored the amendment ever stop to think some tax increases could magically become no increases at all.

Yet that is what has happened this year, when, while Democrats dominate both houses of the Legislature, they’re one vote shy of the three-fifths majority necessary to approve tax increases in the House. And, while they have a supermajority in the Senate, there’s no guarantee they can persuade all Democrats there to support a given tax hike.

Instead, they’ve resorted to these shenanigans to get around the state constitution.

It’s a dangerous game. Oregonians have never been particularly shy about lowering taxes in ways they believe will keep legislative changes to a minimum. If they believe lawmakers are slipping tax increases past them, they may well take matters into their own hands with a new referendum.