In California, where Republicans hold no statewide offices and are minorities in both houses of the Legislature, the G.O.P. has found an arena to exercise some political muscle: the state budget debacle. Republicans are stalwartly committed to blocking the passage of tax increases, while Democrats insist that raising taxes is better than continuing to hack away at already drained public services. The result of this standoff is that California has entered a new fiscal year with no budget.

State governments with budget woes are as common as mosquitoes this summer. But California's problems are so huge — the current deficit is $38 billion — and the barriers blocking any solution are so daunting that it stands in a category all by itself.

If California were like most other states, requiring a simple, rather than two-thirds, majority to pass the budget, it would have met its July 1 deadline. But it's not, and as a result, the government is legislatively paralyzed and running entirely on borrowed money.

Gov. Gray Davis needs to muster up support from a handful of Republicans to get the votes needed to pass a budget, but Mr. Davis is short on bargaining tools. He is unpopular within his party, and the public is so tired of him that a recall campaign is gaining support with lightning speed. By the end of the year, it is conceivable that Mr. Davis will be gone and the new governor will be someone who got a tiny fraction of the vote on a huge recall ballot listing people who have volunteered to run for his job.

California's system of government, heavy on voters' rights to set the rules through referendums and laced with restrictions that tie the hands of elected officials, is high on democracy but very low on efficiency. Right now the two parties are busy blaming each other for causing the state's once-robust reserves to disappear and trying to ignore the serious damage that budget delays will cause.

Officials say California has enough money to keep functioning on short-term borrowing until mid-August. But its credit rating is low, and without a budget, it will not be able to continue living on loans as the fall approaches. It will soon have to begin withholding hundreds of millions in funds from public schools and vendors who sell products to the state.

Local governments, with limited ability to raise taxes, are already reeling from the uncertainty of state aid. If the budget remains in limbo long enough, state employees may have their paychecks dropped to the minimum wage, an average pay cut for individuals of about 70 percent.

The Republicans hope to win voters' approval with their no-tax-increases stance, but their plan means increasing cuts for already strapped elementary schools and universities by $1 billion. A good example of the inflexibility with which the Republicans are operating is their plan to save on education expenses by raising the age at which children are eligible to attend kindergarten.

The divided, posturing Democrats obviously deserve their share of the blame for this debacle. But Republicans cannot be absolutists about opposing taxation at this level of financial meltdown. Whatever rancor they have built up against the governor and the Democrats' liberal spending policies, they should not take it out on the public during an emergency. Californians will inevitably be hurt by the budget crisis; they don't deserve additional suffering caused by the fecklessness of their elected officials.