California's new budget is a weak plan for guiding spending over the next year. It is a strong argument for changing the way budgets are written and passed.

Some of those changes will be complex, but one is simple. The Legislature should be able to pass a budget with a majority vote, or slightly more -- not the two-thirds now required in California and just two other states.

Voters will need to approve this constitutional change, so let's get it on the March ballot. (For other possible budget reforms, see Phil Yost's column below.)

With two-thirds approval needed, seven months of arguing between Democrats opposed to cuts and Republicans opposed to taxes produced a budget that copes with the most massive budget shortfall in state history by cutting a little, taxing a little and borrowing billions and billions.

Even with the laws that make passing a budget difficult, the Legislature should have done better than this.

Some responsible budget proposals were put forward. Gov. Gray Davis' initial effort, in January, confronted the $38 billion shortfall head-on with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

Two diligent members of the Assembly, Joe Canciamilla, D-Martinez, and Keith Richman, R-Granada Hills, outlined a different route, also credible, to getting the state's revenues and expenditures back in alignment.

And they proposed hearings to explore which state programs are working efficiently and which aren't.

Their proposals went nowhere.

What happened instead is that the Legislature tried to paint over the cracks, like a homeowner ignoring evidence of a crumbling foundation.

Fixing the whole problem in one year would have been unduly wrenching. But this budget fixes hardly any of it. The primary escape mechanism is borrowing -- $14 billion. The second is to simply acknowledge that next year's budget will start with an $8 billion deficit.

This same group of lawmakers -- with the possible exception of the governor -- will write the next budget as well. At least next year all the legislators will have one budget under their belts. This year, thanks to term limits, a third of them were rookies who had never worked on a state budget before.