Legislative Commentary

What to expect between now and the special session

It’s unusual to have a two-week layoff between the end of a regular session and the start of a special session; in a sense, I figure it will probably be sort of like the time between the end of the National Football League playoffs and the Super Bowl, where things are going on behind the scenes while the news media all look for something (anything!) new to report.

Believing as I do that the Senate’s approach to a new state budget will appeal far more to the families and employers of our state than the House of Representatives’ plan, here are the points I have made and will continue to make between now and May 13:

The difference between the Senate and House budgets centers on tax increases. The Senate budget requires none to balance, because it doesn’t spend more than the state expects to take in. The House budget requires $1.1 billion in tax increases, and even then it won’t balance (more on that next). Those tax hikes are to support what is probably a 10 percent jump in state spending; nearly all would go not to education but to general government.

The House majority is doing to have to re-rack its budget to see if it still balances at all, much less four years out as is now required by state law. That’s because the House had intended to drain the state’s rainy-day fund and extend/expand the “temporary” tax on beer from 2010. Those are both off the table now, so what will the House cut spending-wise assuming it doesn’t dream up some new tax to pursue?

In 2010 both houses of the Legislature were controlled by Democrats who chose not to bring spending down to match revenue but opted instead for the largest tax package in state history. The business and occupation tax put on services was to be temporary and is set to expire June 30 – however, the House majority wants to extend that (it gave up on the beer tax extension/expansion because the industry threatened to challenge that at the ballot box, the way the bottled-water industry did in 2010). “Temporary” should mean exactly that, and to the Senate, it does.

Voters said no in late 2010 to the tax that had been placed on bottled water earlier that year; why would the House Democrats try it again at all, especially now?

The sheer number and range of tax hikes in the House budget have the potential to put Washington on the list of states that are hostile to business. The key to helping our economy recover, and putting people back to work, is exactly the opposite.

Speaking of jobs, the state’s capital budget funds a lot of construction projects, and that means jobs. However, those projects are naturally on hold until a new capital budget is adopted, and that can’t happen until a new operating budget is adopted (because the size of the operating budget dictates the size of the capital budget).

There seems to be this belief among some in the media (and probably a lot more in the House majority and in the governor’s office) that our Senate coalition just needs to accept some tax increases so the Legislature can agree on a budget and we all can go home to stay. I’d like to be home to stay; why, though, can’t the House and governor put their obsession with taxes aside instead of expecting the Senate to abandon the idea of having a budget that actually lives within the state’s means? It’s that fixation on raising taxes which has forced the Legislature to return to Olympia in 10 days.