Hey look at that, a better than expected August bought us some time to avoid IOUs:

The Democratic controller said the state took in 3.9 percent more revenues in August than the Department of Finance projected it would. Chiang said the August cash totals were sufficient to ward off an IOU threat for now. He previously said IOUs might be necessary by mid-September at the latest.(SacBee)

Not sure what that will do to get the budget in place any sooner, but as for right now, with Arnold in Asia, a deal still seems a long way off.  It just might be that we don’t have anything until the election is decided.  In case this election needed to become more important, well, there you have it.