Legislature Shouldn't Count on Voter Support for Taxes
The Chronicle • Mar 23, 2009
Representatives of the hospital industry and labor unions in this state are hoping Washington voters will ultimately approve about $2 billion in new taxes this year.
The state is facing a budget deficit of $8.8 billion as tax revenues continue to underperform this past year and spending has continued to rise during the past several years in Olympia.
Already lawmakers have made about $730 million in spending cuts. Add those cuts to about $3 billion in coming federal stimulus aid, and the Legislature needs to somehow close the remaining $4.2 billion gap between revenues and current spending levels.
Now that the March revenue forecast has come in last week, our Legislature can get to work in earnest in preparing a balanced budget. The Legislature is expected to make deep cuts in education, services, parks and state worker benefits. It might also include thousands of job cuts in state government from various agencies and both our public schools and colleges.
Once the budget is released to the public, with the cuts in programs and people, the real budget campaign will begin as the special interest groups will tell us we must restore some of their cherished programs.
We are not so sure the taxpayers will be willing to vote in these new taxes, but certainly expect a full-court press by the various interest groups and the Democrats in Olympia to push for the higher spending levels.
Arun Raha is Washington state's chief economist. He said our current financial situation in the nation is the worst since the Great Depression. Raha said it is entirely possible the state economy will continue to sink. Raha said he expects the state's economy will finally bottom out in the third quarter of this year, and then start to improve during the final quarter of 2009. He predicted unemployment in the state will peak at about 10 percent.
Our state representative in the House, Rep. Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, has been constant and consistent in what he believes would be a prudent approach to our state budget.
“We need to start with reassessing the programs and projects the Legislature created or added to over the last four years of unrestrained spending” he said. “We should then prioritize our spending based on the revenues that are available, not on what we want.”
The state doesn't need to increase spending as it has at a pace of about 33 percent the past four years. The state needs to begin the painful, but practical process of learning to spend only as much as it takes in, which might indeed be painful.
