Though state leaders remain far from solving the budget, more action continues to occur on the Senate side.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta, met during the noon hour today with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Steinberg returned for a second budget meeting with the governor a short while ago.
Senate and Assembly leaders are still engaged in two-house talks -- including one slated for later this afternoon. But Senate leaders are holding side discussions because the upper house seems better suited to compromise at this moment, as we mentioned last week.
Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez held a press conference last week to assert that leaders were making progress on a deal by agreeing on roughly $9.5 billion in solutions and accepting another $1.4 billion in rosier revenue projections. That would eliminate about $11 billion out of a $19.1 billion deficit.
The $9.5 billion in solutions come straight out of Schwarzenegger's budget. But Republicans so far deny that they have agreed to the $11 billion in solutions, likely based on a negotiating strategy of not framing the deficit problem in a piecemeal way.
Republicans seem disinclined to negotiate with Pérez until he retreats from his original budget plan, which relied on nearly $9 billion in borrowing to provide extra money to schools and avoid widespread cuts. Pérez noted last week that he was reworking his plan after Attorney General Jerry Brown and Treasurer Bill Lockyer raised legal questions, but he did not specify how he was changing it.
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