That Assemblymen Keith Richman, R-Northridge, and Joseph Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, were the only two lawmakers courageous enough to publicly support a sensible budget proposal illustrates the extreme political polarization in Sacramento. It also portends that California's fiscal crisis could drag on for several months, while Republican and Democratic leaders continue playing a sophomoric game of chicken.

Credit Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters with the chicken analogy. The veteran political analyst aptly compares the budget hard-liners to the pair of adolescents in the classic film "Rebel Without a Cause," who gun their cars toward a cliff's edge to prove their manhood. While Hollywood specializes in make-believe, the consequences of a prolonged budget crisis could be devastating in real life.

Once the state runs out of the $11 billion it just borrowed to make it through August, it will have to either shut down operations or go begging to Wall Street for additional loans to keep the government running. While investment bankers have been willing to lend California money, they may balk at doing so again when the state seems headed for a fiscal meltdown.

Because the state's credit rating has hit bottom, several investment firms have specified that the repayment of any further loans be guaranteed by a dedicated revenue stream. Gov. Gray Davis and Democratic lawmakers are calling for a temporary half-cent sales tax increase earmarked for that repayment. GOP legislative leaders, rejecting any tax increases to close the $38 billion deficit, want a share of the existing sales tax earmarked for the loan repayment. Senate Minority Leader Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga, has promised to campaign against Republican lawmakers who back a tax increase.

Sixteen of the 18 Republican lawmakers who were working behind the scenes to help craft a budget deal bailed out of the process. The bipartisan group included Assemblywoman Patricia Bates, R-Laguna Nigel, whose district dips into San Diego County.

Richman and Canciamilla had the courage to pursue a commonsense budget solution. Their proposal would have pared spending on education, health and human services, corrections and local governments. It also would have rolled back government staffing to 1988 levels, increased higher-education fees and capped spending to match population growth and inflation.

Their plan had been praised by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office and the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California as a credible attempt to resolve the chronic deficit. But getting a budget deal done won't happen so long as party hard-liners hold fast to their positions. Canciamilla correctly chided his Democratic colleagues for refusing to even consider deeper spending cuts, while Richman was right to criticize those on his side of the aisle who insist the budget can be balanced without a tax increase.

Ideological rigidity invites the very political posturing that keeps delaying the day of California's fiscal reckoning. Richman suggested as much when he warned that both sides seem headed toward a get-out-of-town-alive budget that papers over this year's deficit and defers the tough decisions to another day. Meantime, some GOP lawmakers seem content to let the budget crisis intensify into the fall, which makes it even more likely that the wrongheaded effort to recall Davis will succeed.

No wonder so many Californians are fed up with state government.