BREAKING: Jerry Brown Vetoes Democrats' Budget

Well, that didn't take long: not even 24 hours after the California Legislature bypassed him to approve a pile of steaming crap it called a budget, the LA Times reports that Governor Moonbeam has vetoed it.

The first order of business will be to determine whether lawmakers continue to get paid; that is, it's up to Controller John Chiang to decide whether yesterday's activity meets the standard set by Prop 25. But even if Chiang gives the Legislature a pass, it's not at all clear where the budget process is heading. While Brown has obviously not given up on his plan to balance the budget with a mix of spending cuts and higher taxes, yesterday's majority-vote budget would seem to give Republican lawmakers even less reason to agree to the bridge tax that his plan requires. If we had to hazard a guess, we'd say that Brown may ultimately end up following up on the all-cuts budget he's been threatening for months. Of course, this would likely get filled back up with the same gimmicks that characterized yesterday's budget plan, which would call for Brown to apply a line-item veto. So, ultimately we'll probably be stuck in the "fuzzy zone" for a while.