California Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson locked lawmakers in the state Capitol overnight Monday after a middle-of-the-night attempt to pass a budget compromise fell short by nine votes.

Lawmakers milled about, dozed off at their desks on the Assembly floor and scoured the Internet to read morning headlines about their own antics, as the Democratic leader met with lawmakers throughout the pre-dawn hours to try to pry loose the needed votes to end the month-long standoff.

By 6 a.m., no deal had been reached and Wesson aides said he had no plans to allow the legislators to leave the Capitol.

More than five hours earlier, the Assembly rejected a $100 billion budget plan that was approved a day earlier by the state Senate.

"We've just got to keep talking," Wesson said. "It would be irresponsible for us to send people home without doing our job."

Wesson said he was looking for a third of the Republican caucus -- or 11 people -- to put up votes for the budget, saying the plan granted their demand to avoid new tax increases and "they can't have their cake and eat it too."

A third of the Senate Republicans -- five of 15 -- voted in favor of the plan in the other house. In the Assembly, Republicans Dave Cox of Fair Oaks, John Benoit of Bermuda Dunes, Shirley Horton of Benita and Tim Leslie of Tahoe City voted for the budget.

However, Wesson also was struggling to win votes from his own delegation, Democrats who said they wanted their GOP counterparts to put up more votes for what they said was essentially a Republican plan.

Democrats withholding their votes were Joe Canciamilla of Pittsburg, Lou Correa of Anaheim, John Dutra of Fremont, John Longville of Rialto, Gloria Negrete McLeod of Chino and Lois Wolk of Davis.

"When you come up with four votes, it's not enough literally and it's not enough to send a signal that they really are willing to resolve the budget," said Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

But GOP lawmakers continued to balk, even wearied from the sleepless night.

"It's going to take more Democrats," said Assemblyman John Campbell, R-Irvine.

The budget -- crafted by the Senate's top leaders and approved in the Senate on Sunday evening -- relies on $4 billion from an increase in the state's vehicle license fee, which is scheduled to take effect in October, but it does not include any of the tax increases that Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Gray Davis had proposed.

If approved in the Assembly, the plan will be sent to Davis for line-item vetoes and his signature. Davis has indicated he would sign it.

Some Democrats said Monday they were unhappy with aspects of the deal but were prepared to support the compromise plan.

"It's certainly imperfect," Steinberg said. "It comes down to a matter of not-so-great choices."

He said that times in Sacramento "are too volatile" to stretch out the budget debate in light of the efforts to oust Davis midterm in an Oct. 7 election.

Steinberg said Democrats plan to continue to tackle the state's budget imbalances even after sending the budget to Davis.

But others were less willing to go along with the Senate-driven compromise.

"This budget is a get-out-of-town-alive budget and simply rolls all the problems into the next year," said Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge, who said he will not vote for the plan.

As of late Monday, it was unclear whether Republicans were willing to supply at least six votes needed to approve a budget by the required two-thirds margin. Some Republicans said they disliked the plan's elimination of tax credits for manufacturers and cuts to some law-enforcement programs.

Some Democrats were unhappy that the plan did not contain tax hikes they sought and was likely to leave the state with a roughly $8 billion deficit by year's end.

The spending plan includes deep cuts to higher education -- including raising community college tuition from $11 to $18 per credit -- and state-funded health services, but largely spares K-12 schools. It is anchored by a substantial amount of borrowing, including the sale of $10.7 billion in deficit bonds to finance a portion of the shortfall over the next five years.

The Senate budget also relies on $2.2 billion in new federal funds designed to repay states for anti-terrorism and security costs, and it expects a second sale of bonds that will be backed by the expected revenues from a 1998 settlement among states and cigarette makers.

The proposed budget also makes reductions in the state's health care services -- including a 5 percent rate reduction for doctors, pharmacies and managed-care plans that provide Medi-Cal services. But it spares a raft of optional health care benefits for Medi-Cal recipients that Davis had proposed eliminating.

The spending plan includes a provision that would allow the governor in the future to make budget cuts midyear without the approval of the Legislature.

After nearly a month of an impasse over whether to raise taxes and behind-the-scenes negotiations, the Senate quickly approved a compromise with little discussion.

Some officials on Monday privately said it was crucial for the larger house with a wider array of political divisions to quickly approve the budget before interest groups persuaded individual lawmakers to block the plan.

Approval in the Assembly would signify a major break in an impasse that has left thousands of state workers and vendors without paychecks and community colleges without state payments. It also, officials hope, could help prevent other credit rating agencies from following the lead of Standard & Poor's, which lowered California's credit rating by three notches last week.

Davis urged Assembly members to approve a budget, saying that the earliest he can sign a spending plan will be this weekend because it would take his finance staff four to five days to finalize a version for him to sign.

"We're pressing very hard for the Assembly Republicans and Democrats to essentially adopt the Senate budget so we can go forward," Davis said Monday in Los Angeles.