We may not be getting effective governance from movie star-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but we can count on a steady diet of grandiose, and usually hollow, political gestures.

Who could forget, for instance, the time that Schwarzenegger posed with a gigantic faucet, out of which flowed a red liquid, to dramatize budget deficits? Or the time he denounced the Legislature as "girlie men" for delaying budget action?

Having promised and utterly failed to end "crazy deficit spending," Schwarzenegger is resorting once again to cheesy stunts, this time a threat to reduce the salaries of tens of thousands of state employees to the federal minimum wage, supposedly to hoard the state's dwindling cache of cash in the absence of a new state budget.

The governor is poised to issue an order to that effect – although his aides insist no final decision has been made – and when this was published Wednesday, it touched off a storm of protest from state workers and their unions, including a noisy demonstration at the Capitol on Thursday.

What the governor hopes to accomplish from this stunt is beyond obscure; it's opaque. He says he's doing it because the state has a "real and substantial risk" of running out of cash to pay its employees and bills, which is semi-true. There is a cash-flow crunch coming sometime next month or in September, but there's nothing to prevent using "revenue anticipation warrants" to borrow money, albeit at a hefty interest cost. It's certainly been done before.

State Controller John Chiang says there's enough money in the kitty to keep his check-writing machines working through September and that he would refuse to comply with the governor's order, which he says would put the state in "legal peril" because employees might not only claim back pay but be awarded treble damages should the governor's action prove to be illegal.

"I will not recognize the governor's request," Chiang said Thursday. "It puts us in a very precarious position."

All of that aside, Schwarzenegger's move probably has little or nothing to do with the state cash flow, even if he claims it would save $1 billion a month. This is, one must assume, a heavy-handed effort to bulldoze the Legislature into passing a state budget, although how it would do that is problematic at best.

There's a $15.2 billion projected deficit in the budget, which is three-plus weeks overdue, and the Legislature's two parties are in a face-to-face confrontation over whether to close it with new taxes – Democrats are proposing more than $8 billion in new levies – or with the spending cuts Republicans say they want without being specific.

Schwarzenegger is wandering around in the middle, opposed to new taxes but hinting he might accept them under some circumstances and proposing a loan backed by future lottery projects. And there's another sticking point – demands by Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators for some kind of permanent cap on state spending.

Any budget that would be passed quickly would, more than likely, be another get-out-of-town budget loaded with accounting gimmicks and up-front and back-door borrowing that would not truly close the deficit. Schwarzenegger insists he doesn't want that kind of budget, that he wants a permanent solution, including "budget reform" that would include a spending cap and a reserve to cushion future revenue shortfalls.

That's a bitter pill for Democrats and their pro-spending allies to swallow, just as Republicans aren't willing to drink the political Kool-aid of new taxes. It's a big, fat mess, but the governor doesn't help solve it by threatening to jerk the financial props out from under tens of thousands of state workers. He merely reinforces his already strong reputation for ineffective bluster.

Call The Bee's Dan Walters, (916) 321-1195. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.