We’ve known for a long time that balancing the state’s $2.8 billion budget shortfall was going to require raising taxes. Today Gov. Christine Gregoire outlined which taxes she’d like to raise (the ones on candy, cigarettes, and bottled water, for starters).

The money from those taxes will be used to keep important budget items like the Basic Health program, education funding, and senior services, while also leaving the state with $500 million in the bank to cushion any further economic blows.

Not that raising taxes is the only means by which Gregoire wants the state legislature to deal with the huge budget shortfall. Her proposed $605 million in new revenue would come as part of a package that includes $1 billion in cuts and more than $400 million from the federal government.

In a statement this afternoon, Gregoire said:

While there are signs that our economy is stabilizing, we are far from a full recovery. People are still losing their jobs, their health care, their homes. State services are still needed now more than ever before. This proposal maintains basic services while ensuring we don’t jeopardize our economic recovery.

She didn’t use the t-word. But that’s how she’s maintaining those basic services that “are still needed now more than ever before.”

So.

Let the great tax freakout of 2010 begin!

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

24 replies on “Gregoire Rolls Out Her Tax Increases”

  3. The state should just borrow the money. Then the economy will recover faster. And Jesus, spend the $500 million in the bank so people can get back to work.

  4. “europeans have much higher taxes than us to fund social programs, and yet have generally live better and healthier”

    Sure if you don’t mind paying 50% taxes on $50k a year and 10% permanent unemployment.

    Oh, btw, did you hear? Europe has been moving to the center for the past 30 years, ditching socialism, lowering taxes.

  5. That’s a myth about Europe. Get your facts straight.

    Still, I don’t understand why the state govt is not trying harder to issue bonds rather than raise taxes or cut spending. This is a recession and interest rates are low.

  7. I think she’ll succeed in getting the pollution and cigarette taxes through, but good luck on bottled water and pop. It will fail for the same reason the plastic-bag fee failed.

    Has Knute Berger railed against them yet?

  9. “That’s a myth about Europe”

    Really? I lived there for 30 years, grew up under Wilson wouldn’t you know. Hated THatcher like any young man, but now realize she was the best thing for Britain, as was New Labour and the end of Tony Benn and the Loony Left. Also lived in france for 5 years and have enjoyed watching Sarkozy kick the Socialists arses.

  13. #10: Wow. Sarkozy is right wing on cultural issues (like oppressing Muslims) but he is far left of any mainstream
    US politician on economic issues. His first response to the economic crisis was saying it was the fault of the “dictatorship of the market” and said “laissez faire capitalism is dead.”. He then promised to create 100,000 new government jobs. He’s against the Iraq War and pledged to reduce French carbon emissions by 50%.

    The “move to the center” in Europe means that people like Sarkozy are popular and they don’t want taxes as high as the traditional communist/socialist parties, but that’s like saying Kucinich doesn’t want taxes as high as Nader.

  14. You forget, Sarko has lowered taxes on high income earners and has promised to fight the unions….

    Sarko and Obama are about the same on economic issues if you ask me: centrists. It’s why the looney left hate both.

  15. Oh, did I tell you I like Gregoire because she’s a centrist too and will never follow through on the looney left’s hope for an income tax in WA?

  17. The rich should be taxed for being alive. There should be a birth tax on newborns of wealthy people to help cover the expense of these leeches.

    Return the top tax rate to 96%, as it was under Eisenhower.

  19. “I agree, we need at least 70 percent income taxes on Millionaires.”

    Keep chasing those windmills. Want to bet $10,000 it won’t happen?

  20. Tax the rich, or put them up against the wall. Let them meet the same fate as the Romanovs and Chuchescus and all the other rich bastards who got what they deserve.

  23. @14 Sarkozy is not on the cultural right because of Muslim dress. A majority of French citizens appose Muslim dress. In France the separation of church and state does not mean everyone to do as they please. It means a forced secular society. This goes back to the same thing being pushed on Christian. Their way of separating religion and government has a 180 degree different history. America was founded on individual religion freedoms and France was a Catholic Country. In order to rid themselves of that past they force secular behavior in public.

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