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There is more than one way to balance our state’s budget. It looks as if our Governor is favoring a tax increase. I prefer spending cuts over more taxes.
If you are of the same mind then why not Check out this video message or go straight to the PUSH BACK NO TAX petition that is being promoted by the folks at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.
There is just too much drama coming out of our state capital and it needs to end. I’d love to see the drama queen’s show be cancelled mid season, but that would be too much to even hope for. I’ll settle for her contract running out at the end of this season, but that is just about the max time that I can avert my eyes and ears from her ghastly performance as our governor.
In what I can only describe as one of her career’s most pitiful performances the drama queen has been attempting to scare the money from deep in our pockets. I got news; what’s coming up ain’t money, but it is more colorful than just plain ol’ green.
Go read AP’s story Gregoire: Tax hikes are needed to save state programs in the Herald. In that story we see her using some despicable scare tactics, and using them most liberally. She says that if we don’t pay more taxes then the elderly, the children, the disabled, foster kids, volunteers, the hungry, the pregnant; why they will all suffer. And not just a little. They will have things done to them that have words like eliminate, suspend, reduce, cut, and even the ominous chopping block words.
What you don’t find her talking about in the news, is reality. The reality that the budget she is asking us to fund with more of our money, does not really represent a reduction in overall state expenditures. The number according to Sunshine Review for 2009-2011 is and increase to $69,592,333,000. That is a touch over $400 million dollars more than for the fiscal years 2007-2009 as seen in the chart above which is also from Sunshine Review. Did anyone see that bit of information in the article? Nope we’ve only been hearing about chopping, sacrificing and suffering. I’d guess that there are a lot of people in our state that would gladly suffer only a little increase in their income. Why the drama from our elected officials?
What I see is that for the last 2 decades our state government has been making double digit leaps in their spending and now the drama queen, rather than just sulking or just doing her job, has turned on a little poutrage at the thought of teeny tiny little cut. Remember all those scary words she used? Well how scary is it really to come up $2.6 billion short?
$69,176,289,000/($69,592,333,000-$2,600,000,000) = 0.968
or a 3.2% decrease in spending. Not too freakin’ scary is it?
So after the budget increases of 13%, 10%, 8%, 13%, and 14% over the last two decades, and in pretty tough economic times, our state needs to trim it’s spending 3% and our Governor Gregoire is having a problem. And she is scaring the elderly, the children, the disabled, foster kids, volunteers, the hungry, and the pregnant with talk about how they will suffer if their neighbors don’t pay up. Her behavior is greedy, unforgiveable and it makes me ashamed to call her our governor.
I don’t know anyone who isn’t watching how they spend their money right now. A 3% restraint is mild to say the least. If our governor can’t balance that budget without a tax increase, then in my book, she is no more than a scary talentless drama queen.
Time for her to hang it up. Perhaps she can move onto an infomercial or Dancing with has been Governors.
I don’t think there is any doubt that we have a budget balancing problem in our state. While some of our problems may stem from recent issues with our national economy, the majority of our problems started back much earlier and have been building toward this crisis ever since then.
Like any problems we face in life, clear recognition of the problem is the first step towards a solution. Thankfully after 4 years in office, and almost 4 years of denial, our Governor Gregoire has finally faced the fact the our state budget was in crisis. We pay a lot in taxes, but the Democrats who we voted into office have proven that they can spend all of our tax money and more. We are heading for a budget deficit of monumental proportions and have reached a crossroad where in order to balance the budget, we taxpayers need to pony up some monumental tax increases or we need to demand that our legislatures make some monumentally changes in the way they spend our hard earned money; like quit spending it!
In spite of the whole hope & change feeling thing going around in the Democratic Party, ideas for monumental spending changes may not come easy for the progressive and here to for the tax and spend types who have run our state budget into the ground. It’s not that the solutions don’t exist and that there aren’t a bunch of them, it’s just that the Democrats will have to go against there socialist template to find them.
Help is on the way though, just today the Evergreen Freedom Foundation embarked on a 105 day journey which will present 105 ways to balance the budget, cut government waste and stimulate the economy.
The legislature increased spending by 34 percent in the last four years—contributing mightily to our current budget debacle. Actually, the so-called budget deficit is the difference between how much lawmakers would like to spend versus the smaller amount we taxpayers have to give them. In fact, the governor’s proposed budget actually increases spending by 3.2 percent.
For our state to truly live within its means, spending should be cut immediately by the decrease in money they expect to have this year—that would be $500 million. It comes down to simple economics.
And that was just today, for tomorrow they propose that our legislators actually prioritize spending.
The state budget is not on fire, but it is drowning in red ink—more than $6 billion—thanks to four years of lawmakers spending much more than they took in. The state desperately needs a program to prioritize items in the budget, so it doesn’t give the same weight to funding the certification of animal masseurs (the state apparently doesn’t want any stressed critters running around) as it does to the prison system.
Prioritized spending? hmmm? Where would my wife and I rank animal masseur certification in our family budget? Where would you rank it in your budget? And why the heck are any of our elected officials wasting our taxes and their taxpayer funded salaries even talking about animal massage?
I’ve watched or listened to two debates in the last few days and for the most part found them to be like JV football games. I felt like I had to be there because my kid was playing, but as a game/debate it really wasn’t much hold my interest nor to talk about afterwards. Sen. Rossi, Sen.Obama, Gov. Gregoire and Sen. McCain all spent way way way, ok one more way too much time with campaign points.
No matter what the question or rebut, all responses seemed to be something I’ve heard before. I don’t think I learned a single new fact, not a single apparent factual paradox resolved, and certainly the only candidate who seemed to lose there composure a bit was Gov. Gregiore, but that seems to be the norm for her anyway. I also saw/heard a continually arrogant Sen. Obama, a too polished Sen. Rossi and a John McCain who was confident, yet still a bit too reserved.
I can say I felt the debaters landed in a four way tie, but I’m still stumped as to whether it’s a winning tie or a losing tie. I’ll hope that a little later in this now short season, we will be past all the campaigning and start the debating.
What about it!