You’ve just had your pay cut 20 percent.

But you’re hoping to win the lottery in November.

So instead of reigning in your spending and changing your habits you decide to make minor alterations to your budget to allow you to continue to dine at Applebee’s six nights a week. But instead of paying for the meals, you charge them at 14 percent interest.

After all, there’s a chance you’re going to win the lottery in November.

There are not very many people who wouldn’t vilify such a strategy as irresponsible and financially reckless.

Yet that’s what the California Legislature along with Gov. Jerry Brown has done with this year’s faux budget.

The $92 billion house of cards is supported by the assumption that voters will OK new taxes in November to generate $8.5 billion to cover a projected $15.7 billion deficit.

Sacramento has reached a new low point in irresponsible behavior. They should budget by what’s on the table and what can reasonably be expected to happen.

If voters don’t approve the taxes, they will have simply dug a deeper hole by not slashing costs now. And the only way to slash costs is to cut the size of the bureaucracy since the biggest chunk of change are bureaucratic salaries and benefits outside of actual funding of various programs such as local schools, transportation, and welfare.

Be innovative. Change the way California is doing business. It’s nice that California tax dollars will soon no longer support prison guard jobs in other states as we are bringing inmates we exported back home to our own prisons. Stop outsourcing bureaucratic function and make our own bureaucracy more cost effective. State disability claims shouldn’t be processed by a firm in Utah creating jobs there.

Get rid of redundant bureaucracy. Impose the governor’s simple and straightforward pension reforms. And if that isn’t enough, cut to the bone.

In doing so, a real budget putting in place what California can afford given its current revenue could serve as a wake-up call to voters to approve the tax measures.

If nothing is changed, voters who have seen the state stay afloat for the past four years while they struggle left and right to not go under won’t have a great desire to impose more austerity on themselves when they don’t see any consequences of not doing so.

The legislature can cry wolf all they want but as long as they keep propping up current levels of government by Wizard of Oz budget shenanigans everything they say about deeper cuts comes across as insincere political posturing.

Some legislators say the voters have left them with no choice. Rubbish.

The voters have left them with a choice: Don’t spend more than the state takes in for day-to-day services.

It will require a radical transformation of what we have come to expect of government. And it will be painful. But it is no different than what the vast majority of California families, taxpayers, and businesses have gone through over the past four years. Almost all are still standing but they have changed their ways to survive and thrive. It’s time the state followed suit.

The California Legislature needs to cut up the credit card for day-to-day services and stop gambling as they are doing by adopting a budget that counts on voters in November to approve tax increases.

It’s time that Sacramento got the message that the party was over four years ago.

This column is the opinion of managing editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.  He can be contacted at dwyatt