Maybe they can figure out a way to raise progres...

I can't even finish that statement without laughing. Fucking democrats.

California is swimming in black ink, with revenue surpluses projected for the next few years. Washington's economy is doing better, with a lower unemployment rate. But we're not seeing new revenue.

What's the difference? CA has an income tax. WA does not.

@2 Exactly. Also, California legislators had the balls to pass tax increases.

The place to cut spending is in tax breaks. Tax breaks are spending decisions. They are direct government subsidies to specific businesses and individuals.

How would the WA St. Supreme Court enforce the mandate if the legislature does nothing?

Ahh, but from the neo-conservative/neo-liberal perspective, forcing a constitutional crisis may be just what the doctor ordered. You know, never waste a crisis and all that. What better way to get the state out of the public education business than to create some fundamental, existential crisis where the state is forced to choose between adequate funding of public education or new (income?) taxes. The anti-tax, sky-is-falling crowd will likely spend big time to convince Washington State residents that the state really can't 'afford' public education any more, and then suggest all sorts of privatization alternatives.

And yet we justed awarded a largess of $8.7 Billion to Boeing...
No more tax give aways to bad corporate neighbors.

@3 & 2
Washington voters have time and time again made it clear at the ballot box that they DON'T want an income tax, and they are right.
Also, New Hampshire also has a budget surplus, and no income tax AND no sales tax, as well as a minimum wage that the legislature recently did away with...and yet they have less poverty than Washington. How do you liberals explain that?

But in the world of crazy Seattle liberaldom, New Hampshire is like Obama's bombing of civilians in Pakistan : it doesn't exist.

@ 9 Ummm no not really most of those times was in the 1903s and 1970s and once was in 2010 in a heavy GOP year.

The same thing could be said for charter school, they didn't want it. Till they did. Failed four times before it passed.

The right thing to do is to implement a income tax.

When have liberals denied the bombing of civilians in Pakistan.

And in NH not spending any money that how they got a surplus on the backs of the less fortunate.

Sorry that should be 1930s

If the legislation agreed to scrap our regressive sales tax, I'm positive an income tax would pass easily. Too bad it's never gonna happen. So we will instead continue to vote down regressive tax increases leaving these mandates unfunded.

@CS, google is your friend. NH has tax on something we don't do; a tax on interest and dividends. Not a bad idea actually.

@9 NH has high property taxes (second in the nation only to New Jersey), so people on fixed incomes (seniors mostly) have a a hard time affording housing (renters end up paying that property tax too). People with good incomes do (financially) well in NH cause their income is not taxed. Low or fixed income people not so well. But since when do right wingers give a rip about what happen to poor seniors? Let them eat cat food, ya?

@14
Many seniors don't own homes, and they are unaffected by property taxes. If one is a senior it makes sense to sell the house and downsize, as many seniors do anyway.

But sense when do liberals care about common sense? The seniors, along with welfare moms and everyone else, deserve plasma TV's purchased by the government from taxes on people making more than $30,000/year. The damn 80%, they're even worse than the 1%...

@15 No one ever said that boy its conservatives who lack common sense.

I'm all for higher taxes on kids to pay for better schools.

@15 so you think landlords don't charge rent based on their total costs, including property taxes? Really. What kind of free-loader are you? Hello! There is no such thing as a free ride, despite all the magical thinking right-wingers like to engage in. Roads, schools, police, fire protection, etc. cost money! Yes, it is true. Or are you really a commie that things everyone should work for free for the collective good?

@15, Are you so deluded as to think that renters are unaffected by property taxes? Just because it doesn't appear as a line item on the bill doesn't mean you're not paying for it.

And the conservatives are supposed to be the ones who understand how businesses work. Ha!

Goldstein finally said something good! Stat government has been shrinking for decades, you say? Great! That's the best news I've heard all week, Goldstein! Thanks!

@22: I'm sure the people who can't find gainful employment keeping our infrastructure running are happy for you. Kiss my Chicago ass, criminal scum.

@ 19 & 21
The point is that NH has lower net taxes than Washington, and yet it has a big budget surplus, destroying any notion that high taxes are needed for a balance budget which is what this article seemed to be alluding too. Yes NH has taxes like everywhere else. Some taxes are, for the foreseeable future, a necessary evil.

@24: Apples and oranges, c_s. New Hampshire's largest metropolitan area, Manchester, holds about 400,000 people. Washington's largest, Seattle, is home to over 3,500,000 souls. This is a rough way of explaining that Washington has some very built-up areas that New Hampshire just doesn't. With civilization comes infrastructure, and with lots of infrastructure come the costs of upkeep.
Not all states work the same. Not all regions are comparable. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you'll come to understand how simplistic your view of the world is.

@25
Singapore is a VERY built up, very high density area with VERY low taxes and VERY low poverty. How does that work?

The fact is development and infrastructure can exist just as well without a massive, intrusive government. Japan, for example, has massive mass transit that is faster than America and guess what? It's all PRIVATELY OWNED.

@26: How does it work? Singapore skimps on certain governmental functions, such as health care funding. You might pay less in taxes, but you get less in services. Look it up. Now, their system isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's just that the low taxes do reflect on what and how much is given back to the community.

Japan has massive mass transit but much of it, including the original Shinkansen lines, was actually state-owned until 1987. It's easy for the private sector to run pre-existing infrastructure, but it's very difficult for a start-up to organize the funding and planning necessary to build new systems from the ground up.
Not to mention, Japan benefits from being quite small in terms of area. In the much more expansive U.S. of A. there have already been attempts to build privately owned and run large-scale railways. They didn't work very well, as the different companies using different gauges of track were unable to provide uninterrupted service over long distances. The First Transcontinental Railroad wasn't built until the 1860s and required Congress to standardize the gauge and heavily subsidize and invest in its construction and routing.