STEVE INSKEEP, Host: John Myers reports from our member station KQED.</s>JOHN MYERS: A few hours after budget talks broke down at the state capitol in Sacramento, Jerry Brown posted a video on YouTube reminding everyone why his proposal to tackle a $26 billion deficit was the right one.</s>JERRY BROWN: It's a balanced plan and has the support of business, of labor, of environmentalists, of farm groups. I mean an amazing coalition that spans the spectrum.</s>JOHN MYERS: But the few Republicans who considered signing off on a tax ballot measure wanted more - long-term changes in public employee pensions, fewer business regulations, and a temporary cap on state spending.</s>BILL EMERSON: The governor and his stakeholders were unwilling to go there.</s>JOHN MYERS: Republican Bill Emerson is a state senator from Riverside County, east of Los Angeles. He said it all fell apart over the idea of a spending cap, one that would stay in place and limit new expenses until billions of dollars in existing debt was paid off.</s>BILL EMERSON: Our problem is a structural problem that keeps going on and on and on, and we need to make that correction and get that taken care of.</s>JOHN MYERS: Democrat Darrell Steinberg is the president pro tem of the California state senate.</s>DARRELL STEINBERG: The only thing missing from this list is a pony, and we'd give them a pony if they gave the people the opportunity to cast a vote.</s>JOHN MYERS: Governor Brown has insisted he will not use the many budget-balancing gimmicks of years past. He says that means without taxes, California's deficit will be erased solely with cuts.</s>JERRY BROWN: All cuts is going to be an irreversible path forward that will leave a lot of tears in its wake.</s>JOHN MYERS: For NPR News, I'm John Myers, in Sacramento.
California Gov. Jerry Brown has broken off budget talks with the state Legislature, rekindling fears that the state will not be able to back away from the fiscal abyss. John Myers of member station KQED has details.