Schwarzenegger: Why Don't You Try Fixing the Budget?

Last night, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tweeted, asking followers to try to fix the budget themselves on LA Times' wicked-cool budget calculator. "Tell me how you do," he said.

Now that's Government 2.0, or whatever, at its prime.

So, this is how we did, amazingly earning the state an extra $840 million. Of course, that came at the expense of the education system and your taxes. Here's how we solved the budget crisis, making enemies the whole:

• Slashed $5.3 billion from K-12 Schools and Community Colleges
• We also took an additional $4.6 billion from the Community College system, closing it down entirely.
• Cut $1.5 billion from the UC and CSU System
• We taxed cigarettes at $1.50 a pack, that's $1.2 billion in revenue
• We raised $5 billion by taxing the top income-tax bracket more
• Adding a nickel per alcoholic drink raised $585 million.
• Raise the gas tax a shocking 32-cents per gallon and that's $5.8 billion
• Lastly, an oil severance tax to any producer pumping oil from California lands and water raised $855 million.

Well, we did it, without getting a death threat from teachers, students, smokers, commuters and just about everyone... yet.

How'd you do? A discussion is happening over at LA Now and the Governor's Office is using Flickr to collect screenshots like ours above. Of course, you can chime in below, too.