Well not that kind of drilling, the political kind. Today the Senate and Assembly took up the first of the budget measures, the $11 billion in cuts proposed by the Budget Conference Committee. To no one's surprise the Republicans quickly announced they would not agree to the cuts. Both the Assembly and Senate votes failed on party line votes. Two Senate Democrats, Lou Correa and Leland Yee, voted with Rith Republicans against the cuts. Both houses are expected to again take up the budget tomorrow.

Both sides are clinging to July 1 as a deadline that they hope will make the other side come to their senses and vote for the budget. Today's ammunition for this deadline was supplied by Congroller Chiang who announced that if the Governor and Legislature could not come to a deal by June 30th, that he would begin issuing IOUs to vendors on July 2nd.

The tone of the hearing was established from the outset. Senate leader Darrell Steinberg gave a hint at the behind the scenes demands by the Governor and the Republicans when he stated,:

"We don't take pledges in our caucus like some do but if we did it would sound like this: We are not going to eliminate CalWORKs, we are not to eliminate Healthy Families, we are not going to eliminate IHSS and and we are not going to eliminate CalGrants. We are not going to eliminate the safety net. You need to know where we are not going to go."

Steinberg and Senator Mark Leno challenged the Republicans to bring forth their own plan for curing the $24 billion deficit. Republicans for their part complained that they had just gotten the bill language and could not vote on it until they had a chance to read it. But others were critical that Democrats had failed to "remove the small cancer" last fall and if we had we would not be here today. Senator Steinberg wondered how anyone could call a $42 billion problem, a small cancer.

Away from the floor speeches it is hard to see what the strategy is for passing the budget. One staff described it as "a strategy composed of a series of tactics." Among the issues were whether the Democrats planned on passing bills by majority or two-thirds vote. Today the answer was a two-thirds vote which would allow all bills to go into effect when signed by the Governor to maximize savings from cuts. Demcorats were told in their caucus brieifings that the Governor can not blue pencil the changes made to the budget since they are only reductions to the previously passed budget. This news is good because it means the Governor can't recuce programs expenses beyond what the Legislature has done. 

Rumors persist that the Democrats may have limited patience with the two-thirds strategy. Some speculate that if there is not an agreement by Monday that the Democrats will pass the budget with a majority vote and put the pressure on the Governor to decide whether he wants to take California into IOU land.