So, um, when do they sunset all the corporate tax breaks?

It's time for an income tax.

so is there a similar plan for men that was not cut? I fail to see the sexism here...

What is wrong with you ECB? I have never seen anyone so oblivious to the greater picture or so focused in on their own special political interests in any capacity on the internet.

Increase the gas tax.

@3,

Who's says there's sexism? It's a report by NARAL, which, according to its mandate, is concerned about women's reproductive health.

When you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, all budget cuts are painful.

@2 - you know, the legislature could easily impose a flat one percent income tax with a basic $50,000 deduction if it wanted to.

Without going to a vote of the people.

It's in our state constitution.

But ... they're too chicken.

yeah, but raindrop, jobs stimulus fundiing, like the kind obama was talking about, could happen in the health sector, but it's looking like he's going to make it all about road building. so, more roads, less community health service. the cuts are not equally painful.

The state really needs to lay out its priorities and fund those in order first and cut everything else that isn't funded to zero. Is it going to hurt? Yes. But doing cuts 10 percent across the board in every department isn't going to help anything and is going to hurt essential state functions worse than just getting rid of depts that exist because they live up to some high ideal of some group that states "the state should fund this".

Much like an individual would do with their own budget. Pay for rent, food, utilities and if there's nothing left , than there's nothing left and don't go into any more debt. I'm sick of states trying to state that a little bit of everything will suffer and we should try to keep everything going on reduced amounts. Cut the programs to zero that were recently added, say in the last 10-15 years. Somehow we all got here without those programs in the not so distant past. I'm sure we can do it again.

Hmm, so poor people are denied treatment in a clinic by a nurse, leaving them the only choice of going to a hospital ER for treatment because ER's have to treat them even though it's a non-emergency. Poor people, not being able to pay thousands of dollars in bills for the ER visit, will walk away from the bill leaving the hospital, and therefore the county, to swallow the debt. Hmm, that sounds cost effective to me!

@10, the entire problem with that premise is that some people fundamentally believe that the government can spend (and resultantly borrow the funds to spend) the economy out of a recession and is morally obligated to do so in light of the Great Depression.

The counter view is that
A. We are in the current situation largely because of loose interest rates and an increase in debt in all facets of our lives.
B. The reaction to spend and lend our way out isn't feasible if the spending and lending doesn't facilitate GDP growth, tax revenue, and interest payment, greater than the debt burden in the future over the term of the debt issued by the government.
C. There hasn't been a period of time in the past 30 years politically where it was either a good time to raise taxes (it'll supposedly harm the economy or in affluent times people shouldn't part with this growth of income because it is the new floor of income) or it was a bad time to lower taxes (The economy needs more stimulating, taxes are wrong on the principle, we are already exceeding our budget for the next 2 years and should give some back.) No politician of any party in power has the balls to impose higher taxes. The worst part of this lack of balls is the fact that state governments have no mechanism to which they can fund daily operations outside of tax revenue and that revenue goes hand in hand with the economy. Something has to give in this case and politicians are choosing to cut programs in this case.

I'm sure glad the CEO of Boeing gets to write off part of his marketing budget with my tax dollars - NOT.

@13 That's what you get for thinking Keynesian. Anything can be justified by it.

worst. decision. ever. less pre natal money at the same time as community health clinics are seeing less money come in is going to create problems on down the road. where are the fundies who say all life is precious?

No, classic Keynesian says that a writeoff for a Boeing CEO has a lower ROI than one for a line worker.

So outsource the CEO and keep the lineworkers with the money we save.

Eliminating safety net programs will not help the economy. Along with this one, The Governor proposes a 42% cut in the Basic Health program--this threatens the well being of a huge number people in our state who are already scrambling. And yeah, people will rely on ER care, and that will cost the state big bucks.
We have to say no...

#10, Rich white dudes who have never encountered hardship got along fine without these programs. Interestingly, low-income women in need of medical care are not rich white dudes. Maybe we can cut the 30% pay advantage you got just for being born with an outie?

It's sad that state law forces budget cuts like this. ECB is probably right about it meaning larger long term costs in exchange for short term savings. But that's the sort of irrationality the laws preventing property tax increases and requiring a balanced budget more or less determine.

Re: Keynes - first and foremost the target would be deficit spending, but that's not an option. So then it's a question of whether the multiplier (bang for the buck) for spending is higher than that for taxed income. If the tax is progressive then taxing and spending makes sense, but the taxes the governor could push to raise: sales tax, excise taxes, etc. are regressive to flat. There is probably no fiscal benefit to taxing and spending, and the relative inefficiency of government spending probably makes it a fiscal policy non-starter.

Ha! Oh man, this is going to cost the state a lot of money. I'm disappointed to see that it will be cutting back on cervical cancer screening. Once cancer gets rolling, it's a very terrible & expensive disease.
I'm a member of the Washington State Drug Prescription Program, I have met a few people who haven't heard of that program, so I'm just putting it out there for people to Google in case they need discounted drugs during this economic crisis.

Can't wait for my Obama tax cut! I'll spend my on condoms.

Will, as long as the CEO and executive board controls where business operations are conducted, there will always be some incentive from the state to have the executives to throw business into the local area. The ROI by influencing the decision making process to place 10,000 jobs in the Seattle metro area instead of another location justifies things like corporate tax breaks.

The only way to stop this kind of bribery is either through mandate of federal government which brings in constitutional issues or by electing people that don't believe the government should subsidize, give tax breaks, or be involved in private enterprise except in collecting taxes and enforcing laws pertaining to the business.