California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he will completely shut down state government unless lawmakers quickly reach a deal to close an almost 24-billion-dollar budget gap, according to dpa. The former action movie star issued the ultimatum in a meeting with the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, the paper reported Thursday. It was his most dramatic bid to date to get lawmakers from his own Republican party to drop their strident opposition to raising taxes, and to press the majority Democrats to agree to painful cuts in health and welfare programs that are at the heart of their political platform. His comments came a day after state controller John Chiang warned that California faced a budget meltdown by July if a deal was not reached. Chiang said that without an agreement the state would have to turn to IOU's and expensive loans to keep basic services running. Chiang said revenues in the most populous state in the US fell by 1.14 billion dollars, or 17.7 per cent in May, and were 827 million dollars lower than those projected in the most recent budget plan last month. But Schwarzenegger said that the emergency financing was too costly and that his threat to block it was needed to prod lawmakers into action. A loan would only "give them another reason why we don't have to do it now," the governor said. "What we need to do is just to basically cut off all the funding and just let them have a taste of what it is like when the state comes to a shutdown - grinding halt."
