California revenue is growing. So why the talk of deficits?

(AP) — California's economy is expanding and voters just approved billions of dollars in tax increases, yet Gov. Jerry Brown this week projected a budget deficit for the first time in four years and called for spending cuts.

Brown's administration says California's three biggest income sources — personal income taxes, sales taxes and corporate taxes — are all coming in below projections.

[...] sales taxes are depressed by high costs for housing and health care — expenses that don't incur sales tax but eat up consumers' disposable income and crowd out other spending.

For the current budget year, Brown and the Legislature approved $6.2 billion in new optional spending on programs they care about; about $700 million of it is for ongoing costs for universities, state workers, the courts and prison system, and social services.

Despite the recent revenue slowdown driving Brown's current deficit projection, state revenue is up $36 billion since the worst of the budget bleeding that followed the Great Recession.

"Just last November, California voters approved an additional $10 billion of new taxes to line our government's pockets, yet the governor and the Democrats have managed to spend $2 billion more than the state is projected to collect," Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, said in a statement.