It’s no secret that the state is in a budget crisis. The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), a nonpartisan fiscal and policy advisor for California, says, “The budget problem consists of a $6.3 billion projected deficit for 2009-2010 and a $14.4 billion gap between projected revenues and spending in 2010-2011,” putting our budget shortfall at $20.7 billion.

“Addressing this large shortfall will require painful choices,” says LAO. Yeah, no kidding.

Our two likely challengers in the race for governor are Republican Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay and Democrat Jerry Brown, former governor and current attorney general. Neither have serious proposals for solving this crisis.

Whitman, as her website says, has “outlined a bold and achievable policy agenda to turn California around and reclaim our rightful status as America’s Golden State. It starts with creating jobs, cutting spending and fixing education.”

How will she do this? She will cut taxes, institute a spending cap and direct more money to the classroom. Uh, great plan. Except for the fact that we will still have a huge budget deficit, possibly one that is greater than it is now.

Jerry Brown is even less serious in his treatment of the crisis. All his website gives is phony fluff about how he is “fighting for you.” Thanks, governor, but fight all you want. I just want to be out of debt.

The LA Times gives us the chance to play the part in their “state budget balancer.” It is here where you can see that it is harder than it looks.

Being the anti-tax conservative that I am, I tried to close the budget gap by simply cutting spending and without increasing taxes (without cutting education spending, of course). The problem is, if we eliminated all discretionary spending sans education, one-time fixes and that which is of questionable legality, we are still left with a $14 billion deficit. Whoops.

OK, let’s pretend I’m a bleeding-heart liberal, and want to raise all of your taxes to pay for our social welfare.

Congratulations, libs, you did better! Except that there is still a $4.9 billion deficit, not to mention the fact that our already crumbling economy would be stifled to the point where most of our state’s jobs would leave the state in order to find more favorable conditions.

The answer is going to require begrudging compromise from both sides of the aisle. We will have to raise taxes and cut spending. To say you will do only one or the other is to be unserious.

There is no simple solution. After an hour on the budget balancer, I could still not erase the deficit in a way that was satisfactory (although, I don’t know if there is a satisfactory way to do this). It’s going to require some difficult solutions, some hard pills to swallow.

And we, the citizens of California, deserve it. The time for partisan bickering has come to an end. If California goes bankrupt, the consequences could be dire. And it will be the common people, not the politicians, who will be the ones taking the fall.