Sneaking controversial items into a budget should have a political price.

In Maine, Gov. Baldacci has certainly suffered for trying to jam Sunday hunting and a plan to sell 10 years of lottery profits into the budget. Both efforts failed to gain momentum, partly because opponents looked unkindly on the way they were advanced. Sunday hunting is dead, at least for now. And the lottery plan is on life support with several Democrats and most, if not all, Republicans angling to pull the plug.

President Bush is trying the same kind of shenanigans with his budget. Hidden within the budget is a line booking revenue from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Several attempts to open up ANWR for oil exploration have failed. Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe have been among the environmental champions who have protected the refuge from the ravages of drilling. But by sliding ANWR into the budget, the president and his allies in the U.S. Senate might be able to avoid a bruising debate on the issue and a possible filibuster.

The budget assumes $2.4 billion in revenue from oil leases in ANWR. At stake are almost 20 million acres of Alaskan wild lands. To make it harder for senators to oppose, about $1 billion of the revenue from drilling leases would be earmarked for the Forest Legacy program and Coastal and Estuarine Restoration. Stopping drilling could deprive worthwhile programs of funding. That’s a choice even Solomon would avoid.

The budget is not the place for major policy changes, which deserve to stand on their own merits. It’s, as Sen. Russ Feingold called it, a “backdoor maneuver” meant to tie the hands of environmentally conscious senators who have protected ANWR in the past.

Hopefully, President Bush will learn the same lesson as Gov. Baldacci. Big changes in the law shouldn’t be shrouded in the budget. The full Senate will vote on the budget resolution sometime this week.