It’s funny what angry taxpayers and a very large budget deficit can achieve:

To close a $26 billion budget gap, the deal reduces spending by $15 billion, including in previously untouchable though bloated education and health-care programs. Democrats were even forced to implement welfare reforms that most of the rest of America put in place 15 years ago: a work requirement and a four-year limit. The agreement eliminates about $2 billion a year in automatic benefit increases and saves another $1 billion by auditing in-home health-care payments that are notorious for fraud. “Only in California,” says Mr. Schwarzenegger, “is welfare still a way of life.”
The budget is also a triumph for what it doesn’t do: raise taxes.

Read the whole Wall Street Journal piece here.

Of course, some people are shocked that this is what it had to come down to. Conveniently forgetting that back in May taxpayers, not Republicans, said no to raising taxes in order to close the budget gap, Harold Meyerson, of The American Prospect and Washington Post, laments “the budget gimmicks and cutbacks” in the LA Times. It blames it on the state’s Constitution.

This generation of Republicans, however, decided to close a $26-billion shortfall entirely through gimmicks and cutbacks, and the state’s Constitution gave them the power to game the situation to their advantage.

Yeah, Constitutions are annoying this way. They do force some discipline where lawmakers would rather there be none. If you want to feel pain, read his article here.