Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to close the state's gaping budget deficit is a collection of already rejected ideas, supported by almost no one and facing an absurdly tight deadline.

As always, Schwarzenegger remains upbeat anyway.

"I have total faith in our legislators," the governor told reporters Thursday, "that we will fix all of those problems, and we'll get the economy going again and people back to work."

It's going to take a lot more than Schwarzeneggerian faith, however, to solve California's chronic – and growing – budget problems.

Administration officials estimate the gap between the revenues state government collects and the money it spends will grow to $11.2 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and another $13 billion next fiscal year.

Other analysts say it will be even higher because they say the administration isn't taking into account unexpected costs in the next 19 months.

To begin balancing the books, the governor has proposed a $9.2 billion package of tax hikes and spending cuts. But most elements of the plan Schwarzenegger unveiled Thursday have been seen under the Capitol Dome before – and rejected.

That includes three of his four tax increase proposals: a sales tax hike (starved for want of a single Republican legislator vote in September); a tax on oil production (died on the Assembly floor in March); and increased taxes on alcoholic drinks (died without a hearing in April).

The fourth idea, to impose sales taxes on selected services that range from veterinary care to playing golf, has also kicked around the Capitol for years in the form of routinely ignored suggestions from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

Many of the spending cuts Schwarzenegger is proposing have also been considered by legislators – and dismissed.

For example, the governor has proposed furloughing the state's 200,000-plus employees one day a month and taking away two of their paid holidays. But a similar pitch in 2005 went nowhere in the Legislature.

The governor also proposed cutting health care benefits to about 250,000 low-income working families, dropping some medical services such as dental care for 2.5 million poor Californians and increasing the share of Medi-Cal costs paid by low-income seniors, blind and disabled.

"Those are all reruns from the budget he proposed earlier this year," said Anthony Wright, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Health Access California. "And the Legislature rejected them as too severe."

Wright said some of the cuts save relatively little money and have potentially high price tags. For example, he said, eliminating diabetics' access to basic and relatively inexpensive podiatric services could lead to much more costly foot amputations, which would be covered by Medi-Cal.

Proposed cuts in other social service programs are also similar or identical to those rejected by the majority Democrats in the Legislature.

Not all of the governor's ambitious amalgam of ideas are tax hikes or program cuts. Schwarzenegger has also proposed kick-starting the state's floundering economy by accelerating $2.5 billion worth of public works projects, from freeway building to hospital construction.

To pay for it, Schwarzenegger would draw on bonds already approved by voters. Because of the state's system of building projects first and selling bonds to pay for them later, the governor's proposal to speed up the projects needs only legislative approval and not a market for the bonds to pay for them.

That's a good thing, since state Treasurer Bill Lockyer said late last week he's not in a mood to take any California bonds to market.

"Current financial market conditions are not favorable," Lockyer said. "Investors will want to see how the state addresses the budget imbalance before lending to us at reasonable rates."

"Reasonable rates" is the key term. Absent a deficit deal among Republican and Democratic lawmakers and Schwarzenegger, it's possible, even probable, that the state will run out of money before March.

If it does, it might have to resort to issuing Revenue Anticipation Warrants (RAWs) for only the eighth time in its history (six of which have come in the past 25 years).

RAWs are basically a form of borrowing that carry both high interest rates and "credit enhancement fees," which amount to paying banks for the privilege of borrowing.

The last time the state issued RAWs, in 2003, it paid $140 million in upfront fees, and that was when the country's financial markets were in much better shape to lend than they are now.

But the governor's public optimism that the state can avoid issuing IOUs in a few months goes beyond his stated confidence that legislators will respond rationally to the crisis and reach some compromises. He thinks they can do it in the next three weeks, or before the current flock of legislative lame ducks is out of office and the new legislative session begins Dec. 1.

"I think that it's actually good that there's a deadline like that," he said, "because I think that it makes everyone speed up and take it seriously."

But the deadline may be even sooner than the governor anticipates.

State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, said it will be necessary to wrap up the special legislative session Schwarzenegger called for on Thursday by Nov. 23, to provide time for Capitol computers to be changed to accommodate the new regular session.

"Effectively, we'll get two weeks," Perata said. "We just do a blitzkrieg and see what we can accomplish."

The governor's optimism notwithstanding, few people inside or outside the Capitol think much of great moment will be accomplished by the end of this month.

"He is showing the appropriate leadership, both substantively and politically, that he needs to in putting a plan out there," said Rob Stutzman, a political consultant and Schwarzenegger's former communications director. "There's not much more he can do at this point until something gives in the Legislature."

So far, there are no signs anything will.

Democratic legislators have already signaled their unwillingness to revisit proposed budget cuts to which they already said no.

"I have to look at more depth at the cuts to health and human services," said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, "but from the looks of it, it's a non-starter."

Republican legislators are equally adamant they will not yield on tax hikes.

"They're dead with us," said Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines of Clovis. "We're not going to look at taxes."

Despite such hard-line rhetoric, the governor contends that that the current situation is so serious that legislators will respond to it seriously.

"We have a dramatic situation here and it takes dramatic solutions and immediate action. … I think that everyone across the board, Democrats and Republicans, recognize the severity of the problem," Schwarzenegger said Thursday.

If the governor can't rustle up the requisite two-thirds majority in both houses to approve his plan, he could always wait until after Dec. 1 and try with the new Legislature, which will contain 30 new faces.

But even that's problematical. In the Assembly, eight of the 11 Republicans who were declared winners last Tuesday have already signed no-new-tax pledges.

And several of the new Democrats informally surveyed say they're not willing to blink first.

"I think the Democrats have been willing to put many things on the table," said Mariko Yamada, a Yolo County supervisor who was elected to the 8th Assembly District seat.

"But unless there are some Republican votes that the governor can bring forward for tax increases, I'm not sure there's going be much difference once the new class gets in."

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Call Steve Wiegand, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1076.

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