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Budget . . . what budget?

By Jason Mercier & Bob Williams
Lawmakers will reconvene next week for a special session in Olympia where, at a cost of $16,000 to $18,000 per day, they will work to negotiate a new state budget. The lines are drawn between a Senate budget proposal that prioritizes state spending within projected and available revenue, and a House spending plan (not quite an actual proposal) that seeks tax increases to meet the untimely pay raise demands of public employee unions.

House Democrats are struggling to win support among their own members and their counterparts in the Senate for new "sin" taxes on cigarettes, candy, gum, liquor and gambling. While the House approved the spending side of their budget just one day before the 105-day session ended, representatives were not able to agree on how to pay for it. This means they do not have an actual budget proposal to negotiate with the Senate. It seems Senators are willing to work with them anyway.

House Democrats say their budget is "for the children," but their plan would quietly divert money from existing education funds into the state's general fund to meet union demands for public employee salary increases. It would require suspending Initiatives 728 (class size) and 732 (teacher cost-of-living increases) so dedicated dollars could be transferred to the general fund. New taxes—marketed to constituents as essential for health and education—would be used to fill the gaps.

Meanwhile, senators and Governor Locke have proposed budgets that are balanced without the aid of new taxes. They used a model called "Priorities of Government" (POG), which was designed by the governor's budget team late last year. Quite simply, the POG model says the state should first ask how much money it has available, and then prioritize its activities within that amount. After all, that's how private citizens manage their own spending, and it guarantees a balanced budget.

House Democrats claim they did prioritize their spending—it's just that their priorities are different from those of the governor and Senate. They're right. Their priorities are not only different from the governor and Senate, but from many taxpayers as well. The House budget includes state benefits for illegal aliens, Medicaid for families earning 250 percent of the federal poverty level, and capitulations to the demands of labor officials—all controversial expenditures, to say the least.

More importantly, budget prioritization implies that programs were evaluated to determine which were the most important, sacrificing the least important to stay within set spending limits. House budget-writers did not do this. Apparently they couldn't decide between raising public employee salaries at the demands of labor union officials (generous contributors to their campaigns), and ensuring that children have reasonable health coverage and education opportunities.

Raising taxes during an economic slump is a bad idea. Raising taxes on our state's poorest families and children to pay off political friends is an even worse idea. It's time for lawmakers to take this to heart.

Bob Williams is president of the Olympia-based Evergreen Freedom Foundation, and Jason Mercier is EFF's budget research analyst.

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