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State Republican Leaders Reject Democratic Call for Revenues

This Washington   September 22, 2011 at 2:21 pm Josh Feit

Republican leaders in the state senate have flat-out rejected Democratic calls to include new revenue (AKA taxes) in special session budget talks.

Earlier today, after Gov. Chris Gregoire announced that she is calling a special legislative session to deal with the $1.4 billion revenue shortfall that torpedoed the state’s $32 billion budget last week, state senate Democratic leader Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane) and budget chair Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Seattle), who’ve been talking about a revenue solution for weeks,  issued a statement asking Republicans not to start “drawing lines in the sand.”

As legislators, we have many tools for balancing our budget – including giving the voters the option of approving new revenue to pay for the services they want. We strongly encourage our colleagues in both parties, in the House and Senate, to avoid drawing lines in the sand and instead to arrive in Olympia in November prepared to offer solutions and to be ready to discuss all the possibilities.

In order to give voters the chance to sign off on revenues, the legislature would have to pass a revenue package and send it to the voters. That package would certainly need GOP support to be credible at the polls.

However, Brown and Murray’s Republican counterparts, Republican senate leader Mike Hewitt (R-16, Walla Walla) and budget leader Sen. Joseph Zarelli (R-18, Ridgefield) issued a statement that did draw a line in the sand—rejecting any talk of revenues.

We know from recent history that as soon as discussions begin about increasing revenue, all talk of reforms seems to evaporate. How to bring costs down and streamline state government should be the very first thing we explore with our colleagues to prepare for the special session in November.


  • have some more sir?

    sigh.  murray and brown wasted tiem begging for open minds I see.  here’s how you do it:

    1. count votes, D’s got majority.
    2. tell sheldon and conservadems their office budget is kaput if they don’t vote the way D leaders want.
    3. propose a specific plan and tour the entire state getting every activist, every teacher’s union leader, every SEIU member and every person on basic healtha nd unemployed etc. to back it.  Make a damn ruckus.  THE PLAN.  with defined scope and benefits so someone can know “ah, this plan restores 2,000 teachers.  This plan restores 25,000 of us to Basic health.”
    4. This is claled politics.  It used to be seen as a struggle a way to mount power, and use it.  Today, sadly, the D leaders seem to think their job is to try to persuade R’s using reason and logic.  “Please, R’s, try to keep an open mind.”
    It’s a bit pathetic.

  • have some more sir?

    sigh.  murray and brown wasted tiem begging for open minds I see.  here’s how you do it:

    1. count votes, D’s got majority.
    2. tell sheldon and conservadems their office budget is kaput if they don’t vote the way D leaders want.
    3. propose a specific plan and tour the entire state getting every activist, every teacher’s union leader, every SEIU member and every person on basic healtha nd unemployed etc. to back it.  Make a damn ruckus.  THE PLAN.  with defined scope and benefits so someone can know “ah, this plan restores 2,000 teachers.  This plan restores 25,000 of us to Basic health.”
    4. This is claled politics.  It used to be seen as a struggle a way to mount power, and use it.  Today, sadly, the D leaders seem to think their job is to try to persuade R’s using reason and logic.  “Please, R’s, try to keep an open mind.”
    It’s a bit pathetic.

  • Blue Light

    If teachers’ unions and other public employee unions want to play politics, the people (remember them?) should outlaw public employee unions.  The politicization of our shared social institutions are the reason for their ever-increasing expense, ineffectiveness and controversy.  People who promote the politicization of these shared institutions are narrow-minded, talking-point politicos who have no regard for the country and its future.

  • Big Jim Slade

    This would require two things Ds simply don’t possess: 1) Balls and 2) a sense of how to frame issues.

    You might as well wish for a hamster colony to build a rocket to the moon out of shredded newspaper and the runny-wheel.

  • Big Jim Slade

    This would require two things Ds simply don’t possess: 1) Balls and 2) a sense of how to frame issues.

    You might as well wish for a hamster colony to build a rocket to the moon out of shredded newspaper and the runny-wheel.

  • http://www.facebook.com/alexjon Alex-jon Earl

    Well, Gregoire did suggest she should be given the constitutionally-allowed ability to “trigger” certain budget actions. I’m sure if you put the weight on Gregoire you could easily rope in 2/3rds of the legislature to do a 3-step incremental approach to revenue cutting.

    And as a bonus, Inslee could ramble on and on about how this “isn’t something he supports” and McKenna can say “it’s all Gregoire”.

  • Monster

    Amen! my respect for law enforcement and first responders has decreased significantly after their shameful behavior in Wisconsin and im traditionally from a respect law enforcement family but if they are gonna play politics fuck them and their families.

    i tell you what the moment the schools depoliticize the more support they will start getting from conservatives.

  • Monster

    Amen! my respect for law enforcement and first responders has decreased significantly after their shameful behavior in Wisconsin and im traditionally from a respect law enforcement family but if they are gonna play politics fuck them and their families.

    i tell you what the moment the schools depoliticize the more support they will start getting from conservatives.

  • Blue Light

    a good reason for charter schools:  if you don’t want your kid indoctrinated, you will need to remove them from the current union-controlled monopoly:  where even the curriculum is politicized.

  • Willnot In Olympia

    Or….gawd forbid, match the budget to current revenues…..you know….spend what you actually have, make the tough cuts, and move forward.

  • Anonymous

    Babies – take your little selves over to the Department of Revenue site and look up the “Tax Incentives Public Disclosure” pages.  Check out which corporations get millions of our tax dollars as ‘incentives’.  Until this is fixed NO NEW TAXES for me and mine.
    https://fortress.wa.gov/dor/efile/Content/DoingBusiness/MyAccount/TaxIncentivePublicDisclosure/SurveyPublicDisclosure.aspx?TaxYear=2010