Article by Erik Smith. Published on Sunday, April 15, 2011 EST.
Cuts About $3 Billion From Current State Spending Over Next Two Years
Republican J.T. Wilcox speaks on the House floor Saturday during the two-hour budget debate.
By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire
OLYMPIA, April 9.—When the best the House Ways and Means Chairman can say for his own budget proposal is that the House met a legal requirement to write one, you know no one is happy.
No one seemed to be doing any boasting Saturday as the House passed a budget to cover the state for the next two years, whacking some $3 billion from existing state programs.
Budget chair Ross Hunter, D-Medina, offered faint praise, saying the state House met its “legal requirement to pass a balanced budget.”
And while Republicans said they were happy to see the state cut spending, the priorities were all wrong.
During two hours of speechifying Saturday afternoon, not a single member declared he or she was particularly happy. Then, finally, as expected, the House passed the measure on a largely party-line vote of 53-43. Democrat Marko Liias, one of the most liberal members of the House, cast a protest vote against the measure, aligning himself with the Republicans in act though not in spirit.
Now it’s the Senate’s turn. It is due to release a budget proposal Tuesday. Presumably lawmakers will be happier with that one. In the upper chamber, Democrats don’t have as large a majority, and the two parties are working together rather than risk a split.
From there it will be a two-week race to the finish, and the central drama will be whether lawmakers get there on time. This year’s session is scheduled to end April 24.
The 2011-13 budget will be a grim and trim affair, no matter who writes it. Lawmakers this year are caught between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the big spending plans they adopted when times were good and the hard place being the recession that swept the country starting in 2009. Federal bailout money helped lawmakers defer the deepest cuts until now. But there is a $5.1 billion gap between the amount they hoped to spend and the tax money that is expected to come through the door. Meanwhile, they can’t raise taxes, because voters approved Initiative 1053 last November, requiring a two-thirds vote of House and Senate before taxes can be increased. That would require votes from both parties, and Republicans are saying no.
It should be noted that the widely-talked-about $5.1 billion figure overstates the problem. It includes about $1.4 billion for big K-12 programs lawmakers hoped to launch but never did. Lawmakers also are planning about a half-billion in fee increases and fund transfers. So the actual number for cuts is $3 billion.
Losers and Big Losers
Every area of the budget gets a whack, and it’s really a matter of losers and bigger losers. The worst-hit segments of the budget are natural resources and higher education, two areas where state programs have the ability to hit users with fees – things like parks passes, permits, license fees and particularly tuition.
State employees get a 3 percent salary cut – the unionized workers will take them in the form of furloughs. They also will pay slightly more for health benefits.
But majority Democrats in the state House hope to save many of the social programs the governor had proposed terminating, albeit at reduced strength. Most debate has centered on the state’s Basic Health Plan, the subsidized insurance plan for the working poor, and the Disability Lifeline, the state-funded medical and cash-grant program for disabled adults. By keeping them around, Democrats argue that it will be easier to ramp them up when federal health reform starts picking up the costs in 2014.
Republicans argue that it makes more sense to cut spending now. “When you try to do everything for everybody, pretty soon you can’t do anything for anyone.”
The Big Arguments
Two major items made for much dispute on the House floor Saturday. The budget presumes that about 1,600 prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes will be released early. And it assumes $300 million in revenue by selling off the right to operate the state’s liquor distribution center, a proposal no one has seen in writing yet.
And then there’s what you might call the background chatter – the argument that has been raised by Democrats, labor and activists on the left all session long. They’ve been saying the Legislature ought to raise money by cutting business tax exemptions. Republicans have nixed that, too. Two-thirds votes are required for that as well.
State Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, presided over the session in place of House Speaker Frank Chopp, who rarely wields the gavel. So he didn’t make a speech. But he let the world know what he thought about it with a statement released shortly afterward.
It’s the Republicans’ Fault
The budget, Moeller said, “is the best we can do in the face of our Republican colleagues’ refusal to hear common sense and listen to reason. Frankly, their inflexibility severely limits options in this hardest-times budget.”
Moeller cited an example that does much to show what the “loophole” debate is all about. He pointed out that Oregon residents are exempted from paying Washington sales tax when they buy goods in Washington. “This is an $83.7 million loophole,” he said. “This revenue could go to our schools, which, no less than other programs assailed in this budget, are being drastically shortchanged.”
Merchants in Moeller’s own district might think otherwise. Oregon residents pay no sales tax in their own state, and they would have a big disincentive to shop in Washington if they were subject to tax on this side of the river. Would they be willing to buy here if they had to pay an extra $83 million? Probably not.
Not Good Enough, Say Republicans
Republicans naturally found Democrats just as inflexible and just as unwilling to listen to reason.
Said House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis, “We continue to be frustrated by a process governed by one party unwilling to consider bipartisan solutions aimed at controlling government spending. Now more than ever we need a responsible, sustainable budget plan to protect critical services while alleviating the burden of this recession on taxpayers. Our Republican budget team, led by Rep. [Gary] Alexander, has shown a path to protecting education, public safety and services for the most vulnerable without raising taxes. This is the approach we need to speed up our economic recovery and get Washington working again. But as long as the same people in conjunction with the same special interests keep spending more than we can afford, we will end up with the same results.”
Things might be different in the Senate when the bipartisan proposal emerges.
Or at least the rhetoric might be.
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