Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time . . .

California voters must have thought they were sending a message to the do-little state legislature in Sacramento when they chose an action film star to be governor in 2003 and again in 2006. But it's hard to conclude that the message they were sending was to do even less. Yet that's the situation the state finds itself in, with the government paralyzed along partisan lines and about to run out of money. News out of California's capital today is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to lay off thousands of state workers by July 1 if the legislature cannot agree on a budget -- a budget that actually was due last July 1, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper. Layoff notices could start going out on Friday. But how could this happen? It's a failure of leadership and a breakdown of common sense in Sacramento. If it was up to the majority Democrats in the legislature, the budget probably would already have been approved. But because California requires a super-majority, two-thirds, to pass a budget, the legislature has been unable to provide a spending plan for nearly a year. Not one Republican legislator has been willing to vote for a budget proposed by a Republican governor. Budget confrontations have become the norm when July rolls around in California, which operates on a July to June fiscal year, but it has never been this bad. Perhaps it's time for the Republican Schwarzenegger, who cannot get even one colleague from his own party to vote with him, to step down.