Closing the $2.8 billion budget gap

By Will Parry

With the March 11 session adjournment date looming, advocates continued to press legislators to capture some of the billions in potential revenue escaping through 300 tax loopholes in state law.

Without substantial new revenue to offset the anticipated $2.8 billion budget deficit, vital education, health care and human services programs will inevitably face slash-and-burn reductions in funding.

The legislature laid the basis for revenue increases by suspending the operation of Tim Eyman’s crippling Initiative 960 until July, 2011. The initiative would have required a politically impossible two-thirds vote to enact any revenue measure.

Leading the campaign for more revenue was the “Rebuilding Our Economic Future” coalition of labor, education, faith, social service and senior groups – 130 organizations in all. The Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans is part of the coalition.

Budgets presented by Governor Christine Gregoire, by the Senate and by the House only partially addressed the revenue shortfall.

The governor’s budget included $605 million in new funding, including only $102 million from closing tax loopholes. Her budget also included $967 million in cuts, mostly to human services. These cuts would come on top of the $3.6 billion cut from programs during the 2009 session.

The Senate followed the governor with a budget that included $838 million in cuts and the House with a budget that included $653 million in cuts.

“The legislature just isn’t proposing sufficient revenue,” said Jerry Reilly of the Eldercare Alliance.

The massive totals of proposed program cuts -- $967 million for the governor, $838 million for the Senate, $653 million for the House – do not reveal the cruel impact that reductions on that scale would have on the many essential services provided by the state.

For example:
The elimination of $11 million in funding for the community health centers that provide care for 70,000 uninsured Washington residents; reductions in food aid and financial aid to low-income families; cuts in dental services for adults and children; cuts in funding for hospitals that serve the greatest number of low-income patients; sharp reductions in funding for education from K-12 through university; further cuts in funding for mental health services for low-income persons; the elimination of programs to assist persons in long-term care facilities with bathing, eating and dressing; cuts in programs that protect air and water quality and that clean up toxic spills; and zero new funding to address the waiting list for the state’s Basic Health Plan, now at 93,000 and growing.

The answer is not to rob one program to fund another. It is to confront the need to plug holes in our Swiss cheese revenue statutes. In this deep and prolonged recession, we need our safety net programs more than ever.

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