I guess I’ll never learn. For when I first read the lede of today’s editorial in the Seattle Times, I actually expected the unsigned author to go on to mock voters for their unrealistic expectations.
VOTERS were clear in the midterm election that funding education is a top priority in Washington state but additional taxes and heavy borrowing are not the way to do it.
But no, the Seattle Times editorial board obviously sees nothing wrong with this spend more/tax less math, and goes on to suggest that “Legislators will need a strategic plan around prioritizing and paying for education.”
Uh-huh.
Thing is, public schools consume 41% of our state’s $14.9 billion annual general fund, while higher education consumes another 10.9%. So if taxes are off the table, how exactly is the legislature supposed to even maintain funding for education at current levels, let alone fund the reforms passed in the previous session, all the while closing a projected $4.5 billion budget gap?
No really… I’d like to know. And since the Seattle Times editorial board has so vociferously opposed nearly every tax increase that has come our way, I think it’s past time for them to share their priorities with readers.
Do we deny children health insurance, and the dying hospice care? Do we empty the prisons and/or shutter our state parks? Or, as Joni Balter seemed to imply on KUOW this morning, are bloated benefits the primary cause of our fiscal crisis?
The state has about 112,000 FTE’s on which it spends about $7.1 billion annually in salaries, benefits and other related expenses. So if we were to slash all state employee compensation by say, 20%, that still wouldn’t get us a third of the way toward closing the deficit. So what next? The Seattle Times has championed this money for nothing agenda, so now that voters have once again endorsed it at the polls, isn’t it incumbent on its editorial board’s ardent pro-schools/anti-tax advocates to explain exactly how it works?
Or, would it be foolish for the state to take fiscal advice from a money-losing, dying newspaper? I mean, if the legislature ran the state’s business like Frank Blethen runs his, we would have bought Maine at a premium a decade ago, only to sell it off for pennies on the dollar after suffering steep losses.
I’m just sayin’.
Or we could just kill the deeply boring tunnel.
#1: eliminate all rural road maintenance funds.
Will @1,
Different budget. Really. That comes from a dedicated transportation capital budget. The two don’t mix.
Max @2,
Again, different budget. Remember, our state constitution dedicates gas tax to roads and ferries.
Then kill funding for anything that directly and only benefits the oh-so-red exurb and rural areas. They envision a low-tax, small government paradise, let’s show ’em what that looks like.
How does one solve the problem that in a democracy, people are free to vote for policies that don’t work? I mean, as long as “I want all the benefits of government without having to pay for it” has a little checkbox next to it, it’s going to win every time.
I say yes: stop all highway spending, even the highway patrol. Shut all the parks. How about this: shutter WSU, ESU, and CSU.
God, these people make me so angry.
#3 / #4 : Hint – constitutions can change.
Hey now, Fnarf, there’s plenty of liberal, big-government-lovin’, marriage-equality-promotin’ folks who attended WSU. I am one of them. Although I do wish more of those proud Republican growers out on the Palouse would remember that it’s Patty’s efforts in the Senate that keep them in duallys and Deeres.
Perhaps their plan is to capture a leprechaun and force him to reveal where his pot ‘o gold is?
how do you put shutters on a park
Based on the comments here…we’re really not getting our money’s worth…
That the gas tax is dedicated to roads doesn’t mean we can’t defund maintenance on rural roads. The gas tax only covers a small percentage of road construction and maintenance costs.
Make anyone named Blethen pay double on the inheritence tax.
@9, I know. And when all the liberals are forced to leave Eastern WA, they’ll see what a useless vacant plot of nothing they really are.
The magic money fairy will provide, you’ll see! We don’t need no stinkin’ taxes – but by the way, don’t you dare cut MY pet programs or fail to fill the pothole on my street by tomorrow or cut back on firefighting or public safety or close a park or cut library hours or…ad nauseum.
The Seattle Times can finger-paint their suggested WA state budget, or any other one for that matter, on the bathroom wall with their excrement and it will be worth as much as if they presented a formal, line-by-line composition including the cost of every stamp and ball-point pen the state will have to pay for in the next 18 months.
In other words, talk is cheap.
The only budget that will matter is the real one, cobbled together after the mean-spirited, narcissistic vampires in the conservative part of the sub-basement have their say. After they finish screwing the people least able to defend themselves, and least able to pay for their monthly “nut,” they will crawl back under their rocks for another 6 or 12 or 18 months.
Quick! Somebody invent a Raid® or Roundup® that will eradicate conservatives.
Hmmm. They are already dead, though, so nothing may really get rid of them.
@3 don’t care. Just kill all Eastern Washington road spending and the tunnel and we can call it even.