The Cost of Inaction: House Speaker Pro Tempore Warns of “Draconian” All Cuts Budget
The Newswire doesn’t usually post links to stories, but this important interview of House Speaker Pro Tempore Jeff Morris deserves wide circulation.
In it, Morris tells TVW that the current gridlock within Washington state’s Democratic Party leadership over passing a revised budget during the 2010 legislative session could result in another “all cuts budget”– exactly what every Democrat has said he or she wanted to avoid this session.
Something that’s not been widely talked about is not adopting a budget at all is an option. We have a supplemental budget -– if we didn’t adopt one and if we got into a cash flow issue, the governor has the authority to start doing across-the-board cuts…
If we can’t get people together with either an agreed to budget number or what taxes are need to buy state services back then that would be an option. That would probably be the most draconian but one that would be the most expedient.
If nothing moved from this point in the different — I hate to use the word factions, but I call them camps — I would say that that’s a possibility and it’s something that you may see talked about more in order to get people talking and to realize the seriousness of not making decisions.
It would be hard to imagine a bigger gift to the Republican Party for the mid-term elections than the failure of the Legislature to pass a budget this year. And to have the Governor exact $2.8 billion in new budget cuts on top of last year’s $3.4 billion would likely set the Democratic Party’s centrist and liberal factions at war with each other. Is this the doomsday scenario that the Democratic Party leadership is going to invoke to bring its various caucuses in line? That sees to be what Rep. Morris is saying.
Comments
By Ryan on March 5th, 2010 at 9:14 am
It would be hard to imagine a bigger gift to the Republican Party for the mid-term elections than the failure of the Legislature to pass a budget this year.
I’m not sure that’s true. The Republican Caucus has been saying pretty consistently that an all-cuts, no taxes budget is something they’d very much like; the end result of that happening would be the loss of levy equalization (which would destroy rural schools) and the closing of prisons like McNeil Island, Maple Lane, and Pine Lodge, all of them in conservative districts. If schools and jobs are at risk it’s not just the Democrats who would feel the blowback.
By Trevor Griffey on March 5th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I would be amazed if Democrats, who control the Governor’s office and more than 60 percent of the House and the Senate, were able to successfully blame the Republican minority for their inability to pass a budget in 2010.
By Keith Scott on March 8th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Are politicians lazy? An across the board spending cut is easy to do. Taxing a minority(high income earners) is easy to do. Adding wasteful but good sounding programs is easy to do. What is hard is cutting individual programs and staff that are not effective or reforming those that are not performing up to par. What is really hard for politicians is to cut such programs when times are good. What is especially easy is giving away something to the public and claiming it is free of consequences..
Have we, the electorate, become so lazy that we can’t tell this will not end well? If so, we deserve it. After all, we elected these people to represent our interests. If we keep demanding something for nothing we will end up with nothing.