After a three hour meeting, Democratic Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg sounded hopeful a budget is within reach.
"It was a very good session and we have a few more things to talk about and we're hoping to be done tomorrow or the weekend at the latest."
But Aaron McLear, the governor's spokesman, didn't seam to share Steinberg's optimism. In fact, he said only a little progress was made.
"No major breakthroughs at all, just kind of working through the issues. We still are where we were, we have a 19 billion dollar deficit."
McLear says the governor's initial proposal included about 13
billion dollars in cuts. He says that number has gone down, but a
final agreement hasn't been reached yet. One thing that is certain;
the governor's idea to borrow two billion dollars from the state
workers retirement program, CalPERS, is no longer an option.
