BUDGET DAY PLUS 55 -- On this balmy Sacramento afternoon, while the political eyeballs are fixated eastward in Denver, it's worth noting that Sunday is the next milestone in California's state budget morass.

No deal by that day will make this budget stalemate the longest in Golden State history. And there's not even a whiff in the air of any kind of deal that will stop such history from being made. In fact, just the opposite.

"There's no huge deal that we're getting ready to pop up in the next few days," said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass.

Bass' reality check, though she says she remains optimistic, was made this afternoon in a brief chat with reporters in her Capitol office.

Both houses of the Legislature are officially in session, and for now it appears only a handful of Democrats sneaked off to the Mile High City. Speaker Bass pretty much closed the door on her own travel plans, telling reporters today that she has no plans to set aside budget business and jump on a plane, even for a scheduled fundraising event in Denver.

And her comments on budget negotiations help reinforce the notion that things remain very much stuck.

That was best exemplified by Bass' tentative comments on chatter about any deal making in the Assembly that would involve borrowing funds from local government, tobacco taxes, and others.

In summarizing her talks with Assembly GOP Leader Mike Villines, Bass laid out the issue thusly:

"He is very clear that [Republicans] will not vote for taxes. And I am very clear that [Democrats] cannot balance the budget through cuts alone. And so we have to find a way to fill the $15 billion gap."

That certainly sounds like the borrowing plan... which probably won't fully close the gap but would bring the numbers much closer together... may be the way out.

The speaker said more worrisome than a raid on these voter-approved funds would be the expensive Wall Street borrowing needed to keep the state afloat if the impasse drags on much longer.

Nonetheless, Bass denied that such a borrowing scheme is the only option. She again suggested the closing of so-called tax loopholes. But few Capitol budget watchers believe that there's enough money to be found in scaling back and/or erasing tax credits.

And so the standoff continues. For those who've forgotten, the record for late budgets was set in 2002; that summer's morass ended with approval of a budget by the Legislature on August 31 and signing by Governor Gray Davis on September 5.

[update: The original posting had the wrong dates in it... thanks to the quick eyes to keep me straight --JM]