I don't really gamble, but I wish I'd bet someone that our state would be short of money before we even got to the January budget proposal. This Sacramento Bee story explains where we stand.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger estimated Monday that California's budget will fall out of balance by $5 billion to $7 billion this fiscal year, on top of a $7.4 billion gap already projected for 2010-11.

If true, state leaders would confront at least a $12.4 billion to $14.4 billion problem when Schwarzenegger releases his budget in January. California currently has an $84.6 billion general fund budget.

With this completely expected news, I'm going to be really, really surprised if we manage to avoid mid-year cuts in this year's state budget. After that we can look forward to more talk of cuts and tax increases for the next fiscal year. Anyone want to take bets on whether our state government will actually start to address the problems that have put us in this position?