SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lawmakers braced for a long debate Thursday as they consider a complex budget plan struck by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders that is designed to reverse the state’s slide toward insolvency.
Under the compromise, the state hopes to eliminate less than 60 percent of a projected $26 billion deficit with spending cuts. The rest would get covered by one-time raids on local government funding and accounting maneuvers, such as deferring state employee paychecks by one day for a savings on paper of $1.2 billion.
Given past budget debates, whether the plan gets the Legislature’s required two-thirds approval is not likely to be known until today. It could take even longer before officials decide whether the deal will allow California to stop issuing IOUs.
Legislative leaders acknowledge their solution is imperfect and contains distasteful provisions such as offshore oil drilling and cuts across all major programs, including education, prisons, health care and welfare. But they’re making their case to 115 other lawmakers that the plan is vital to address the state’s cash-flow crisis.
“Given the enormity of the numbers, I’m damn proud of what the Legislature and the governor have done here to avoid a complete catastrophe,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.
But the plan’s passage remains uncertain in a fractious Legislature that has been mired in a fiscal crisis for years.
