What a way to spend Valentine’s Day….

SACRAMENTO (AP) — California lawmakers began debating Saturday night whether to raise billions in taxes and cut billions more from education and other programs to close the state’s $42 billion budget deficit.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, said the budget-balancing plan would
provide a “stable framework” to erase the state’s red ink.

“It helps stop the bleeding,” she said. “It infuses more cash into the system and
it buys us time to work together to find ways to spur the economy…. None of us
came here wanting to cast these type of votes, but this is an emergency.”

That piece of news moved about 8:45 p.m. Sources tell me at this late in the day, a vote may not come until after midnight – that is, if they don’t deadlock (joke?).