California has a budget deal. As with all deals, the question is whether it is a good one or a bad one.

That depends on your viewpoint. If you work for the state or a school district, or if you're wondering whether your local school district will be able to pay teachers this fall, or if you're worried about whether you or someone you know will continue to receive benefits from the state -- if, like many Californians, you have a direct stake in seeing state government continue to function in the short run, then this deal probably looks pretty good.

If, on the other hand, you are more concerned with the long run -- with the state's ongoing financial health, with expenditures matching revenues, with sensible changes to reform and stabilize the state's tax system -- then this deal probably looks like a loser.
Note the qualifying "probably" in both cases. The truth is that few people outside the leadership of the Legislature and the governor's office really know the details of what's in the deal hammered out by Democratic and Republican leaders of the state Senate. (For that matter, it may be something of an act of faith to believe that even they know the details.) The real winners and losers will become apparent in the days ahead, and you can bet there will be frenzied efforts to turn some of the former into the latter and vice versa.

But this much is obvious. The state went into this budget cycle with an ongoing structural deficit of somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion annually, depending upon whom, if anybody, you believe. And it will go into the next budget cycle with an ongoing deficit of about the same size.

In other words, the fundamental problem remains: The state's taxes do not yield enough money to pay for all the things its citizens want it to do. And the citizens' representatives, in the Assembly and Senate, can agree on nothing better than stopgap measures -- including borrowing $10.7 billion -- to make up much of the difference.

That $10.7 billion gap represents the failure of the state's elected officials to come to terms with reality. And anybody who thinks that is a good deal would be well advised to stay far away from offers of free desert land, miracle profits from gifting clubs and unclaimed riches in Nigeria.