It's the spending, stupid

By Jason Mercier, Evergreen Freedom Foundation

Why is the state facing a growing budget deficit? Quite simply, to paraphrase our former President, "It’s the spending, stupid."

Increased state spending that has outstripped revenue is the true culprit responsible for our budget deficit, not voter initiatives (unless you take into account those that demanded increased spending without corresponding revenue, like the recent teacher "cost of living" increases).

In fact, Governor Locke knowingly signed this current budget, fully aware that the moment he did, the state would face a $642 million deficit. That deficit has only continued to grow with time and is likely to balloon to more than our current $2 billion before month’s end.

Unfortunately for the taxpayer, rather than address gluttonous spending habits that are at the root of our deficit, legislators are hinting that the only way to balance the state’s books is to increase taxes.

Red ink in our own personal budget means that our first, last and only legal remedy is to bring expenses in line with revenue. Robbing our next-door neighbor for extra cash to bridge the gap is not an option. But that is exactly what the budget writers on the Senate Ways and Means Committee are pondering.

In a recent op-ed in the Seattle P-I, Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Senator Lisa Brown (D-Spokane) concluded that, "... we’ve got to bring revenue in line with expenditures." In plain English the Senator means that taxpayers need to part with more of their limited income to feed the ever growing spending addiction of the legislature.

At the same time, she chided common sense approaches to addressing the deficit such as a hiring freeze and other administrative cost efficiencies, asking, "At what point do these measures start costing us more than they are saving us?"

Quite frankly, in light of the recent state audit and Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) findings, many more efficiencies are waiting to be found in Washington’s budget.

For example, one JLARC study determined that nearly half of the state employees trained as managers over the past three years do not actually directly manage any employees despite being paid manager wages.

While outright tax increases are still being gingerly considered, Senator Brown and her colleagues are going full steam ahead to eliminate "tax loopholes." They don’t consider this action to be a tax increase, but rather a correction of previously "giving breaks" to businesses.

No matter how you dice it, when government garnishes money from businesses it is a tax increase and directly removes revenue from their bottom line. While new jobs may or may not be being added as a result of these "tax breaks," the real question is: how many current jobs will be lost if businesses are faced with a heavier financial burden during our recession?

Consider the warning from Carolyn Logue, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business: "If they put more taxes on business, they’re just going to drive more businesses out of the state, which will reduce revenue even further."

If legislators really want to accept responsibility for their actions and ensure that Washington doesn’t face future deficits, they’ve got to change their current budget mentality.

The desire to "bring revenue in line with expenditures" must be replaced with the self-control to instead budget with the same principles those of us in the real world use and bring expenditures in line with revenue.

Revenue isn’t the problem, "it’s the spending, stupid."

Jason Mercier is Deputy Communications Director for the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation. He can be reached at (360) 956-3482 or jmercier@effwa.org.

Contact: Jason Mercier, Deputy Communications Director, (360) 956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org