EDITORIAL TAX AND SQUANDER.

UP and down the state, Democrats are howling to the public about deep cuts in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget and the supposed harm they're going to do to everything from school kids to old folks.

But to have an honest debate about the state's finances, we have to get one thing straight: No one's ``cutting'' anything.

In fact, the governor's 2005-06 budget proposes record state spending of nearly $112 billion. What stews the Democratic leadership is that Schwarzenegger isn't raising spending as much as they had hoped, and he won't pass the costs on to the public in the form of higher taxes.

The real debate isn't about cutting critical spending, it's about changing the culture in Sacramento from ``tax and squander'' to ``living within our means.''