Remember last year after the legislature passed a biannual budget — that we’re still operating under — and the Seattle Times Editorial Board praised them to high heaven?
The session in the spring was bloody — but also successful. It was an honest budget, with fewer gimmicks than in earlier years. And in the Senate it was done with the cooperation of both parties. If legislators come back, they should do it that way because it is the way that works.
Like it or not (and I didn’t like it) that budget was bipartisan, especially from the Senate. But the Seattle Times thought it was a success. It works. So now, we’re operating under the same budget, and we need urgent reforms.
THE deadlock in Olympia is not about the budget. Really the deadlock is about whether to accept three reforms demanded by Republicans and moderate Democrats or to pass watered-down versions. We urge legislators to go for the full reforms, because they make the state budget more sustainable in the long run.
My God! The budget is unsustainable. And how do we reform our unsustainable budget? With bipartisan (3 Democrats in one house of the legislature and zero in the other so far is bipartisan, FYI) reforms. Reforms like making retirement worse for state workers. Reforms like having a shittier health care package for teachers than the one they negotiate now with their districts. Reforms like 4 year budgets. You know, because we can’t do 2 years, why not 4?
No reforming our taxes to make them more fair or to raise more revenue. No making sure revenue keeps up with the size of the economy. Of course if the legislature passes those types of reform and it doesn’t pan out, expect the Seattle Times to freak out and demand another round of “reforms” of the same type.
If a 219-212 vote in favor of Obamacare can be called a ‘strong democratic majority’ by Obama, then three Dems joining a wall of GOPers can be called ‘bipartisan’.
Deal with it.
The school employees heathcare bill SB 6442 is supported by Public Schools Employees Of Washington and opposed by the WEA. The WEA is wrong on this one.
SB 6442 streamlines and simplifies things, it saves the state a bunch of money, it give school employees like janitors and para-educators access to better and it moves some folks off of Washington Basic Health. Right now we have lower paid school employees that can’t afford to insure their kids on their districts plans so they are on Basic Health, where they absolutely do not belong.
@1
So if one person tells us 2+2= 5 then anyone else can come along and tell us that 3+3=7 and that second person will be correct?
Obama might have said that, but if he did he wasn’t correct and neither is the Seattle Times.
Deal With it.
Oops, access to better healthcare.
@3
The actual quote was:
“a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
And the incorrectness about the meaning of bipartisan is Carl’s, not the Times’.
Curiously, you and I agree on @2.
@5
It’s not curious at all, SB 6442 is the right thing to do for a whole heck of a lot of reasons.
Sorry, it’s the Seattle Times calling it bipartisan, which it is clearly not.
Yeah, I wouldn’t call that a strong majority.
@6
You are quoting Carl, not the Seattle Times, with your first snippet in grey.
The problem isn’t the partison nor the bipartison budget. And “sustainability” isn’t a word used to describe a system which relies on a very unstable tax (sales taxes) to support it’s infrastructure. What’s sustainable one year isn’t sustainable in another.
And if you cut the taxes low enough to get you by in the worst of the years, the Republicans will just complain that it proves they need a permanant tax cut so that the tax collected in the worst years becomes the maximum tax to be collected in ALL of the years.
What caused the legislature to keep going back into session on the budget was simply because the last budget measure assumed the economy wasn’t going to get any worse, but it did. They tried to put a few band-aids on the problem on the assumptin that revenues would increase (and the demand for social services would decrease) as the economy improved. So far, that hasn’t happened yet.
The primary change toward a “sustainable” budget would include some form of income tax – but there is no way “Fairview Fanny” is going to advocate for that.
(For those of you who might not know, the reason a sales tax is so volatile is that it reacts in extremes to what economists call “consumer confidence”. Our decisions to buy taxed discretionary items is based not on whether we are currently employed or unemployed, but on our expectations of what MIGHT happen in the future. It reacts more to fear than to facts. This might be good for individuals in the micro-economic sense, because it gives them an impulse to save in order to provide an economic buffer in case they become unemployed in the future. But in the macro-economic sense, on the state level, it is bad, because it creates a rapid reduction of revenues at the very time when demand for state services for those actually unemployed increases.)
One of the reasons it is so important to win this year’s govenor’s race is that the Republicans will take credit for the lack of state budget problems during his term. Of course, the state’s budget problems will pretty much resolve themselves next year as aerospace hiring creates a boom in consumer spending – regardless of what governor is in charge at that point. Gregoire’s ability to help keep the 737 in Renton and win the 787 assembly line and 767 tanker battle has more to do with that than any budget savings by cutting worker’s pay and benefits, all of which offset the loss of the second 787 assembly line to Charelston. Of course, two years from now nobody’s going to be remembering that or giving Gregoire credit for that, especially the Republicans.
@9
you really are a fucking idiot, arent you. do you actually read the garbage you write?