Senate passes budget - hike in sales tax favored
Posted by Scott "The Piper" St. Clair - March 28, 2010According to the Associated Press, on Saturday the Washington State Senate narrowly approved a spending-budget cart without a tax-package horse to precede it.
Per the AP story:
Lawmakers are trying to bridge a $2.8 billion deficit, which represents the gap between current state spending and expected tax collections through June 2011. The Legislature solved a $9 billion deficit last year through a combination of spending cuts, one-time accounting fixes and billions of dollars in federal bailouts.
This year's Senate budget plan calls for about $830 million in spending cuts, along with the roughly $920 million in tax increases. Another $500 million would come from fund transfers and other one-time fixes, with federal assistance penciled in for about $580 million. Some $525 million would be left in reserves.The Senate's GOP minority, with little power to affect the final outcome, said the Democratic budget plan was far too speculative and didn't seek to seriously reduce the long-term cost of state government.
How to pay for it? Under discussion are a combination of the budget cuts, a sales-tax hike, closing some so-called "tax loopholes" and raising the cigarette tax $1 per pack. None of these are final, however.
The "fund transfers" mentioned in the AP story may come back to haunt the Legislature. Sweeping cash out of designated accounts in order to dump it into the general fund to pay daily bills is like raiding your kids' college fund in order to continue to subsidize a luxurious lifestyle.
Speaking of raiding college funds, in their proposed budgets both the Senate and the House targeted any number of designated education accounts for looting to fund the general budget, including the popular Education Savings Account program that is seen all the time in television advertisements.
Looking at the capital and general budget proposals makes talk of how necessary it is to raise taxes to fund education look hypocritical since education account after education account are getting sucked dry. In addition to over $100 million out of ESA, accounts for capital and construction projects for five state universities and community and technical colleges, scholarships for future teachers, and others total millions more.
Also, consider the reliance upon federal assistance. Just how long would your parents be willing to send you hundreds of millions of dollars giving you the ability to not live within your means?
What about the failure of state government to step up to the plate on spending for the Washington State Heritage Center, as our own Brett Davis wrote about recently? Of course, the Secretary of State's office protests vehemently claiming the project creates jobs.
Take the effort to eliminate the successful K-7 Online Learning program while talk continues to include dubiously effective early learning programs, which would inure to the benefit of teachers' unions, as Diana Cieslak wrote about.
Finally - not really, but three examples will suffice - what about the governor's failure to address state employee compensation and benefits? As Amber Gunn wrote, the means and opportunity are there to get state worker unions to the bargaining table to negotiate some reality into collective bargaining agreements that are far more lucrative than contracts in the private sector. Is it good policy or better politics that causes her to ignore this savings opportunity?
Legislators talk about how hard they're working and how painful the cuts they're "forced" to make will be. Rarely do they mention the pain experienced by those who pay the tab.
The Piper
Thoughts? Add Comment -
Steven said on Feb 28 2010 at 5:42pm
I want the names of all those who voted to raise our taxes!
I'm sure EFF is working on that.