San Francisco  - California missed its annual deadline to pass the budget Monday as lawmakers quarreled among themselves and with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger over ways to close a massive 24.3-billion-dollar deficit.

However, speaker Karen Bass said she hoped to have a budget to pass to Schwarzenegger next week that would include 13 billion dollars in cuts, about 1 billion dollars in new taxes on oil production and vehicle licensing fees, and about 6 billion dollars relating to accelerated collections of personal and corporate income taxes.

California, which has one of the world's ten largest economies, has suffered a devastating financial fallout from the crash in the property market and high unemployment, and runs the risk of an economic meltdown if a budget is not passed by the start of the financial year on July 1.

But a spokesman for Schwarzenegger said the looming deadline would not pressure the governor to relax his opposition to the imposition of new taxes on Californians.

"As the governor has said, he will not support a tax increase to solve our budget, so he opposes increasing the vehicle license fee," spokesman Aaron McLear said. "He supports debating other non-tax increase measures." (dpa)