The Senate just passed their revenue bill with several new amendments, and it is not the package the governor or House wanted. In short: The sales tax increase was lowered, not eliminated (as the House has been demanding in negotiations.)
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane), Photo by Camden Swita
The Senate moved from a 0.3 percent increase to a 0.2 percent increase, which will cost them about $104 million in revenue.
Bottom line: The Senate has proposed a smaller revenue package—going from their original proposal of $890 million in new revenue to $809 million. (The House proposal was around $700 million.)
Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3) said that in the end the Senate will have to squeeze more money out of the budget—meaning more cuts—in order to have a healthy ending fund balance.
The budget passed by the Senate during regular session left an ending fund balance of $523 million.
The Senate wants to hit an ending fund balance of $500 million (they’re uncomfortable relying on federal dollars as the House does). To hit their goal now, they need to find about $68 million in cuts. No word yet on where those cuts might happen.
The ending fund balance is a key part of the budget negotiations with the House, and the Senate wants to keep as close to that $500 million amount as possible in negotiations. (The House budget’s ending fund balance was at about $356 million when regular session ended.)
The Senate also added three exemptions from the B&O tax: Giving nonprofit and public hospitals, realtors, and companies doing R&D a break, basically shrinking the number of biz categories they were planning to tax. This moves them closer to the House’s agenda of taxing fewer companies, but it also lowers their revenue.
The House has not passed its revised revenue package yet, but they did pass their capital budget today—unchanged from the one they passed during the session, meaning Rep. Hans Dunshee’s (D-44, Snohomish) $861 million green retrofit bond proposal is back in the Senate’s lap.
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Yet spending is still being increased by nearly $3 billion.
Looks like they really made some some tough choices. Not!
Except to raise taxes and spending.
Would Lisa and Frank please get a grip and get out of Olympia. Daily headlines that the legislature is passing tax after tax are daily vote losers for all democrats.
I've heard Ed Murray say 10 days is no big deal given the Great Recession. Maybe not, if you think 10 days of tax increase headlines is good for democrats in this state.
The current leadership in the the state House and Senate, because of their failure to reach a reasonable agreement, have become a godsend to the state GOP.
Would Lisa and Frank please meet pronto and agree to end this today. They have already done enough damage.
The sales tax is political suicide for the Democrats.
So lets see, the sales tax increases in enacted, all the campaign materials that have already been produced saying that Democrats “voted for the largest tax increase in Washington State history” are simply edited to include the sales tax. Then Tim Eyman challenges the law and the voters approve a repeal of whatever revenue law is passed, and the Republicans and their Business allies take out many vulnerable Dems across the State in November, take control of the legislature and enact another all cuts budget next year.
Yeah great strategy Democrats.
We couldn't possibly say, lets close tax loopholes, make polluters pay, and raise a few targeted sin taxes and LOWER the sales tax all at once and make one of the most regressive tax structures in the country actually better for the middle class. That would just make too much sense to have any chance in Olympia.
Stop catastrophizing and figure out, on your calculator, what another .02 sales tax would do to you. Say you bought something for $5,000. That's another $100 on top of the current sales tax. Which would you rather have happen: you pay another $100 on $5,000, or have thousands of people go without health care? Because we're down to that.
As far as a revenue package of $8 million, we have a hole to fill of $2.8 BILLION. That's mainly due to the fact that we don't have a reliable revenue stream in Washington state which drops us like a stone during a recession. It's not due to reckless spending. But I guess if you think that trying to keep people alive during a time of high unemployment is reckless spending, there's nothing more to say to you.
If the Democrats don't raise revenue however they can to sustain whatever safety net is left, they don't deserve to be called Democrats and they don't deserve to run again as Democrats.