Dems Bow to Negotiate, Rescind Threats to Vote on Overdue Budget
Democratic leaders in the State legislature withdrew the threat of holding a floor vote on their budget plan Wednesday. That's because they say they're making progress in negotiations. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez says the four leaders had a productive meeting late Tuesday afternoon.
Nunez : So now we're saying: keep the dogs away, everybody should refrain from making this a muddy fight where we start throwing things at one another, and instead we decided to scale back that campaign and continue the conversations.
Nunez spent much of Wednesday morning in meetings with the Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines.
Villines : There's some give and you know, there's some moving on both sides to ultimately get to where we need to be. We're not there yet -- we're not there yet. But I think we're making progress.
Republicans have said they wanted to do more this year to reduce an ongoing budget deficit, while Democrats have said they've drawn the line at further spending cuts.
The fiscal year began July 1 st and a budget was supposed to be due in mid-June.
