Mostly, however, he expressed frustration over the financial crisis that threatens to overshadow the final year and a half of his governorship.
All sides -- legislative Republicans, Democrats and the governor -- have pledged to plug California's deficit by the end of June. The new fiscal year begins July 1.
"We will meet the July 1 deadline," Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said in an e-mail to The Times.
If lawmakers fall short of that goal, as they have many years, Schwarzenegger's refusal to borrow would leave the nation's most populous state with no way to pay its bills.
"Payment deferrals and IOUs -- that's all we would be left with," said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for state Controller John Chiang, who monitors California's cash flow. Chiang reported Wednesday that the state's revenues have fallen $827 million below projections made only weeks ago.
Amid a cash crunch earlier this year, the state deferred some payments, including taxpayer refund checks. But California has not issued IOUs since the early 1990s.
Schwarzenegger has proposed slicing deep into public schools and eliminating college student grants, health insurance for 930,000 poor children and the state's welfare-to-work program. But the Democrats who dominate the Legislature have countered that they will not disassemble California's social safety net.
In the Senate, Democrats have sketched a counter-proposal that would drain the state's reserves and rely on hopes for a rosier economic future to hold off the deepest of the cuts. Their plan would resolve up to $20 billion of the projected $24-billion deficit.
The governor called that approach "hallucinatory" on Tuesday and "irresponsible" on Wednesday. "We have not hit the bottom" of the economic crisis, he told The Times.
Some rank-and-file Democrats are holding out hope of raising taxes to close the deficit. And the state's largest labor group, the Service Employees International Union, launched a $1-million TV advertising campaign Wednesday to press for more taxes on oil, tobacco and liquor.
Eliseo Medina, SEIU's national executive vice president, said the governor "ought to be worrying about trying to maintain services instead of trying to kill the messenger."
Support from some Republican lawmakers, most of whom have said no to further taxes, would be needed for such proposals to pass the Legislature.
