WASHINGTON  The Obama administration has gone on the record again that it will not use federal stimulus money to prop up California as it wrestles with its fiscal problems.

“It’s obviously not an easy time for the State of California,” the White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said Tuesday at a briefing after The Washington Post reported that top state officials had requested aid. “We’ll continue to monitor the challenges that they have, but this budgetary problem unfortunately is one that they’re going to have to solve.”

But a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took issue with The Post’s article, which said officials had gone to the administration “hat in hand.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s communications director, Matt David, said: “We are in complete agreement with the White House that California should be solving its budgetary problems on its own without a bailout from the federal government. Governor Schwarzenegger has stressed time and again that we need to get our own fiscal house in order, and that’s exactly what he has proposed to do. The governor has not asked for federal assistance to address California’s fiscal crisis.”