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Amid Dire Warnings, State Again Misses Budget Deadline Afterward, leaders of the Assembly and Senate said there were no signs the impasse was about to lift. Both houses of the Legislature recessed hours before deadline Monday night, having taken no action on the budget. "It's an immovable object and an irresistible force, I guess," said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), his tie loosened after a floor session in which no progress was made. "It's not happy and it's not good and it's not right, but it is." Because of that standoff, the midnight deadline for putting a new budget in place passed without one. By itself, that is not a new phenomenon in California. It has become fairly routine, in fact, in recent years. But new legal rules and the size of this year's budget gap — at $38 billion, it is larger than the entire annual spending of most states — mean that this time, the Legislature's failure to agree on a plan could have far more damaging consequences than in the past. On Monday night, as the deadline approached, leading state Republicans released their latest idea, unveiling a proposal that backers say would close the budget gap without new taxes. "This is a model that should serve as a blueprint for a final solution," Assembly Republican Leader Dave Cox of Fair Oaks said at a news conference with two dozen Republicans behind him in a show of support. The plan called for cutting elementary school education by more than $1 billion a year beyond the cuts that the Legislature has already approved. The savings would be achieved, in part, by delaying the age at which children begin kindergarten. About 110,000 children scheduled to begin classes in September would have to wait another year. The University of California and the California State University also would be hard hit, each system losing about the equivalent of the money needed to run one of its largest campuses. State prisons would be cut back by $450 million, which Republicans said could be achieved by improved efficiency but which Democrats said would result in the early release of 20,000 inmates. Whatever else it might do, the proposal did not break the standoff over the state's $38-billion shortfall. One Democrat, Assemblyman John Laird of Santa Cruz, called it a "compromise for people within the Republican caucus." Gov. Gray Davis was equally adamant. "Let me be clear," he said in a statement. "I will not sign a budget that slams the door shut on more than 100,000 kindergarten students. I will not sign a budget that denies opportunity to tens of thousands of deserving students who want to go to college." The proposal was not even voted on, though Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) said he would call a special session later this week to debate it. Until legislators can agree on a budget — so far, Republicans oppose any solution that requires new taxes, while Democrats insist on tax increases along with spending cuts — California is poised to spend the summer in the midst of a rolling shutdown of state services and payments. That begins today, and if it goes much longer, many people could be affected:
• Some payments to schools, community colleges, state universities and the University of California would be cut off — in some cases, as early as the end of July. Similarly, the state may be unable to pay
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