Last week the Democratic leader of the state Senate said the state should provide child care for people no longer on welfare, among $470 million worth of other social services.

Consequently, Sen. Darrell Steinberg said, in January he will attempt to reverse Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's line-item budget vetoes eliminating those services from the recently adopted state budget.

The vetoes created a modest $1.3 billion reserve. Last year, the governor's vetoes created a mere $500 million reserve. California ended the year $4.8 billion in the red.

Free-market think tank Pacific Research Institute concluded in a new study that "California's government has grown too large and inefficient." More spending exacerbates the problem. PRI says California should learn from other states how to get more bang for the buck.