The livestream of Gov. Gregoire’s press conference is useless—get some more bandwidth, please, TVW—but the Seattle Times seems to have gotten an early look at what she’s proposing.
Eliminated completely: The state’s Basic Health program and state assistance to unemployable people with mental and physical disabilities.
Suspended: State-subsidized kindergarten and some funding to poorer school districts.
Reduced: State financial aid for college students.
But.
This is only the budged she’s required by law to provide—one that balances income and expenses by using only existing revenue. What’s missing from that equation? New taxes that could be approved by the legislature when it convenes early next year:
She made it clear today she plans to dump this proposal and quickly write another one that includes tax increases.
“This document is not true to the values I believe in and which have guided me through a 30-year career in public service,” Gregoire said in a letter released by her office. “It is not a budget I can live with, nor is it one I believe Washingtonians can live with it.”
Click here for a .pdf of the letter, in which she says these are “the hardest times for our state in the past 80 years.”
Sad to say, but if we all voted for Rossi, the results probably would not have been this bad.
Washington state democrats have no sense of fiscal responsibility. And now the the most vulnerable in our state are truly fucked.
Great job!
Your Liberal Welfare State is collapsing around your ears.
The natives will be getting restless, soon.
So the Basic Health program, held up as a shining example of good government-run health care, is axed.
Greaaat.
Raising taxes should be no problem.
True Blue Washington is full of Liberals whose biggest regret is that they don’t get to show their patriotism by paying More Taxes.
Can’t wait for the legislative session to begin…..
4FTW
Liberal Seattle hipsters scream how efficient government healthcare is but can’t/won’t pony up to provide bare bones coverage for the poorest residents of the state.
talk
talk
talk…
Income tax?
An increasingly more regressive tax structure, there’s an easy fix– but the GOP said nope! So it’s onward with the bandages!
8
whaaaaaa
the gop has a spell card that negates our democratic majority!!!
@2, that is both sad to say and silly to say.
All this would be different if we sold MJ from state liquor stores to adults and taxed it heavily.
Has anyone noticed that Washington has a pretty stupid constitution?
Cuts should come from the top not the bottom. Identify any programs that help the affluent more than the poor and axe those.
@12 I don’t recall anything amazingly stupid in the Washington State constitution, at least none out of keeping with how US democracy is usually laid out.
There are clearly problems, however, as the constitution lays out education as one of the whole reasons for the state. Is it the constitution that’s to blame when our legislative bodies push off the responsibility of funding directly on the voters? Of course, the whole by district school funding issue and our top heavy school bureaucracies are also issues, but common to other states.
great, less funding for the mentally ill. but i guess they’re not much of a bother or anything…
@2- You’ll have to look very hard to find any evidence of the GOP anywhere being fiscally responsible.
@16 very true. I guess what I’m saying is that Rossi would have made some ugly cuts to the budget had he become Governor, negating the need for the near total elimination of health services in the state we see today.
I’m no reactionary conservative, but there is only so much the morons in charge can get away with. Gregoire can complain about the bad economy all she wants, but how much has the state budget increased since she entered office?
Ah yes, the conservative Utopia. 1931 America.
@18: But any strong, free individual can make it if he’s man enough! And motivated enough! And lucky enough! And also born a far enough away from the crumbling bridge over the toxic waste-polluted river of lost jobs! 🙂