Rumors are rampant that the state Senate is closing in on a budget deal.

A deal is not to be confused with a solution. A solution would set California on a solid financial foundation.

A deal is an arrangement that allows both parties to pass a budget, now 15 days late, so the state can legally pay its bills and its employees and stagger forward -- only to do this all over again next year.

Any hopes that a gargantuan budget shortfall of $38 billion would prompt Gov. Gray Davis and legislative leaders of both parties to set aside partisanship and find some visionary solution were dashed long ago.

In January it was possible to think of getting started early with shallower cuts and lesser tax increases, spread over a longer period of time, and of making strucutural reforms and not just annual adjustments.

Those opportunities were frittered away, leaving budget choices that range from minimally adequate to awful.

The process reflects a Legislature tied in knots by partisan rigidity, a two-thirds requirement to pass a budget, a governor unable to win converts to his own plan, and a public that has given legislators no direction. A Field Poll published today echoed earlier polls in finding that Californians don't like taxes, don't like cuts, and don't like their elected representatives.

Today, the Senate is expected to consider -- for show, if nothing else -- a Republican budget that finds $2.7 billion more in savings than the current Democratic alternative.

Though it won't pass, it could serve as the basis for cutting a deal, and it has the virtue of showcasing each party's blind spots.

Republicans rightly ask why Democrats continue to contend that welfare recipients should get a cost of living increase, and why they won't consider reductions in the generous menu of optional MediCal benefits.

But why are Republicans against an increase in community college fees, which can be doubled and still be the lowest in the nation? They're also missing the boat in opposing increases in a host of other fees, such as pollution-discharge permits, which put the cost of regulation on the polluters instead of the taxpayers.

Neither the Democratic nor Republican budget proposals should be credited for tackling the state's problems head on. Each anticipates borrowing, through a bond issue, $11 billion to pay off the accumulated deficit.

Add in loans the state is getting to cover pension contributions and the gimmicks that defer expenditures, and the borrowing is up around $15 billion.

The Legislature should be borrowing less, raising fees, increasing a tax at least temporarily, and cutting hard. Instead, it has stalled and stalemated itself into a corner where none of the choices are good.