Senate passes state operating budget
State not off the “budget roller coaster,” says Hewitt

April 25, 2009

Senator Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, issued the following statement today on the Senate’s passage of the final state operating budget:  

“State spending has increased more than 33 percent over the past four years, and spending has occurred at 2-1/2 times the rate of revenue coming in to the state. Now we’re making painful cuts. It simply isn’t compassionate to give something and then take it away.  

“In 2006 Gov. Gregoire said our state budgeting had been a roller coaster, spending when we have a surplus and struggling to make painful cuts when the economy slumps. ‘It’s time to even out the ride,’ she said. 

“The budget we passed today did not get us off that budget roller coaster. In fact, it sets us up to be in an even worse situation in two years when we write the next biennial budget. It fails to make the necessary reforms we called for and actually cuts very few programs – many of them are just left on the books and paid for with one-time monies. That means we’ll be back here in the same spot again when that one-time federal or transferred money goes away.  

“My Republican colleagues and I called on the governor and the majority party to begin addressing this problem in December. We knew we had a looming budget deficit, and also knew that taking early action would compound our savings. As we pointed out, every dollar saved at that time would have resulted in four dollars saved in the budget we voted on today. Bottom line, we could have spared ourselves $2.4 billion of these cuts just by acting early. But we didn’t do that. Instead, the majority party waited until day 104 of a 105-day session to pass a budget.   

“We have also called for substantive government reforms. Republicans have proposed many good government reform ideas to get us back on track with our future budgets, and we offered budget amendments tonight that would have saved nearly 4,000 college slots, restored services for the most needy, kept up government performance audits and more – and we proposed ways to pay for them that would have hurt a lot less. Our amendments were not adopted. 

“The budget roller coaster ride did not even out with passage of this budget. It’s time to bring spending in line with our projected revenue. That’s the only way we’re going to avoid this situation again in the future.”  

For more information contact Senate Republican Caucus Communications Director  Rebecca Japhet at (360) 786-7516 or japhet.rebecca@leg.wa.gov.