Hoping to change the terms of the annual debate pitting cuts in services against increases in taxes, a leading Democrat in the Assembly is set to engage Republican legislators and the governor in what he promises will be a serious quest to find the "waste, fraud and abuse" that so many insist riddles state government.

Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat newly installed as chairman of the Budget Committee, plans to hold six hearings over the next six weeks, each one focused on a different part of the government. Seeking to build a consensus with Republicans in the Assembly and with the Schwarzenegger administration, Steinberg's goal is to end each hearing with a set of reforms and a dollar amount representing budget savings that can be credibly attached to each of them.

Five of the hearings will look for waste and duplication, and for efficiencies that can eliminate them. The topics: regional centers for the developmentally disabled, child care, prisons, Medi-Cal fraud and state purchasing and technology procurement.

The other hearing will examine the tax code with an eye toward the credits, deductions and exemptions known as "tax expenditures." These favor different groups of taxpayers and in many cases have existed for years without a rigorous review of their cost, fairness and value to the state as a whole.

"We want to get beyond the rhetoric and see if there are ways we can re-engineer some of these programs," Steinberg said. "Every dollar saved from doing something better is a dollar that can go toward helping somebody who needs it."

Let's be clear: Steinberg comes from the far left of the Democratic spectrum, and he believes new taxes, or at least significant new revenue, will have to be part of any budget passed this summer. But after five years in the Legislature, the past two as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, he also knows that in the debate over taxes and spending, Democrats and Republicans have been talking past each other.

The problem is that both sides focus on the big picture - the multi-billion-dollar gap between projected spending and projected revenues - and too often fail to engage beyond the numerical outline of the problem. Democrats, eying the widening gap, insist that raising taxes must be part of the solution. Republicans just as quickly say that spending is the problem. In the past, that confrontation has led to stalemate, gridlock and, ultimately, borrowing, because neither side would give.

Steinberg, who has quickly developed a close relationship with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wants to change that dynamic. By focusing first on potential efficiencies, and later on service and benefit cuts that everyone can live with if not support, he hopes to narrow the debate. Eventually, he'd like to see it framed as a series of trade-offs between the most unpalatable cuts, the ones nobody wants, and potential new revenue, including tax increases.

"I don't think we have framed the question very well in the past," Steinberg says of the Democrats. "I think we have led with taxes in a way that we haven't had a debate about what we provide in public services and how we pay for those services.

"The Republican retort is that government just needs to operate better. We have made a mistake by running away from that issue instead of embracing it."

The hearings won't exactly be no-holds-barred. Steinberg wants the focus to stay as much as possible on inefficiencies and inequities. So while he might examine means-testing some programs that now are available to everyone, he won't be looking at across-the-board cuts in services or benefits.

That's a debate that will go on elsewhere in the Capitol. Also, to avoid an ideological stalemate, the idea of contracting public services en masse to private firms, always a point of contention between the parties, won't be part of this discussion.

Steinberg plans some stylistic changes as well. Rather than seating lawmakers on the dais, with the staff from the governor's Department of Finance sitting below, Steinberg says everyone will be at the same level, a symbolic move meant to encourage cooperation rather than confrontation. The committee will also call on the state auditor and the legislative analyst, two offices that have a wealth of information already about potential savings in state programs, information that in many cases the Legislature has blithely ignored.

"We're prepared to work together and see what we can accomplish," Steinberg said, adding that he hoped to have a bill containing the reforms ready to move through the Legislature before the governor's scheduled budget revision in May.

None of this is rocket science. It makes sense for the opposing parties to focus first on something on which they ought to be able to agree. Nor does Steinberg's gambit mean there won't be a partisan confrontation this summer. That's probably inevitable, at some point.

But if nothing else, it's a sign that the partisan freeze that has locked the Capitol into inaction on fiscal issues might just be starting to thaw.