Like many states around the country we in California are currently engaged in our annual budget battle. This process is always something of a mess and passage is invariably late by days, weeks or month. This year the process is being made more difficult by the fact that we have a $ 15 billion dollar deficit.

While my discussion focuses on California the fact is that this problem is being echoed all across the country in states, counties and cities (as well as at the federal level of course).

Under any circumstances this would be tough but it is made even harder by the fact that you have hard left Democrats on one side and hard right Republicans on the other. The Democrats are against any spending cuts and the Republicans oppose any tax increases.

Now I am no fan of tax increases nor do I want to see vital services cut. But the simple fact of the matter is when you have a deficit of 10-15% of the total budget you are not going to solve it with one solution. Between education, roads, prisons and other vital services you have only a small amount of discretionary spending and its not going to provide $ 15 billion in spending cuts.

At the same time, you cannot simply hike taxes by 10-15% and expect the economy to absorb that kind of a hit. Indeed if you restrict the hikes to ‘the rich’ then you would have to make the increases even larger and potentially very harmful to the economy.

The obvious solution is both sides need to accept the need to give in a little. Republicans must accept tax increases, even in areas they don’t normally accept. Democrats are going to have to accept spending cuts, even in some areas normally considered untouchable.

This isn’t simply rhetoric, it is reality. The problem is that neither side wants to give in so we end up with weeks of battles and harm to the state’s credit rating before we finally arrive at the solution we already know.

So how ’bout having the gang under the dome grow up a little bit and stop playing games with our lives.