Budget mess hurts many innocent folks

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If you've been trying to ignore the daily grind of bad news out of California's Capitol, we don't blame you.

Watching our state's so-called leaders trying to negotiate a budget is like focusing on the dull pain of a toothache that you hope will just go away.

But now would be a good time to tune in if you can stand it. This thing has turned into a full-blown abscess -- and the infection is spreading.

The brinksmanship is causing pain where it never should have been inflicted, such as vendors for the state, and is adding pain to those who have already sacrificed, state workers facing additional furlough days.

Last week, three bills that nearly everyone in the Capitol agreed should be part of the solution failed, worsening the problem lawmakers must solve by several billion dollars. The red ink is now accumulating at the rate of $25 million for each day the state operates without a balanced budget.

The bills fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage in the Senate because Republican lawmakers, siding with the governor, demanded that majority Democrats agree to a comprehensive plan to close the state's $24 billion budget shortfall without more taxes.

That's an understandable impulse, and the Democrats are not blameless here. They deliberately put up budgets that they knew the Republicans opposed and the governor had threatened to veto. Then, with time running out, they offered stopgap measures that would have eased the state's cash shortage for a month or two but hardly put a dent in the real imbalance between spending and revenues.

All sides in this battle have been petty.

By failing to agree before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year, the lawmakers now must cut an additional $2 billion, but they must do so while education spending gains a new level of protection. That means everything else, including health and welfare programs, has suddenly become much more vulnerable.

The state is running out of cash, and it will be issuing IOUs -- actually warrants -- to pay some other government agencies and private vendors.

It isn't clear how many banks will accept them or for how long, so basically the state has shifted the hardship to those who had no fault in the situation.

Then there are the state employees. The governor has ordered a third unpaid furlough day per month for many but not all state workers, the equivalent of a 14 percent pay cut.

This is unfair to the employees who already have been asked to shoulder a disproportionate share of the pain from this budget meltdown. The latest pay cut will drive some of these workers into desperate financial straits, which is unconscionable.

Schwarzenegger, the Democrats who control the Legislature and the Republican minority must keep working until they solve this problem.

Want to contact your legislator to demand a budget now? We've printed the information on the adjoining page.