The clock is now ticking on the state Legislature’s 100 or so days in session—the mad rush during which the next two years’ budget will be set and the damage of past years’ Republican follies might be undone. But those who think that Democratic control of the governor’s mansion, the Senate, and half the House will result in any dramatic changes are in for a big disappointment.
The balance of power in Olympia is still held by moderate Republicans, regardless of which side of the aisle they actually sit on. While the Legislature will have the luxury of not having to contend with as many alarming bills from the Nuthouse Wing of the Republican Party, neither will it be troubled much by any alternative visions of how the state might be run. It’s not just that conservative rural Democrats hold a lot of key legislative posts; the party as a whole seems unwilling to articulate, let alone ask for, remedies to the emergencies either started or left unaddressed during the years of Republican control.
Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Gary Locke’s proposed budget for the next two years. Somewhere in the depths of Clintonism, a pollster has decided that education is a terribly safe buzzword for Democrats: It plays well to the right demographics, keeps the money flowing from the teachers’ unions, and makes for a nice bromide: Who can possibly oppose investing in our children’s futures blah blah blah? So, after two years of cutting deals with Republicans, Locke has finally decided to do something proactive, and it has “education” in every other line.
It is also an essentially Republican bill.
What’s most interesting in Locke’s budget isn’t so much what’s in it as what’s not in it. After a Democratic campaign that wailed about the oppressiveness of I-601 spending caps and the $471 million Prop. 49 drains from the general fund for transportation pork projects, Locke isn’t even spending $60 million of the money available to him.
It’s not like there’s a shortage of things that need money. Locke gives some much needed money to education, but it’s not enough to undo past years’ neglect, especially in areas like teachers’ salaries and rapidly escalating tuition. But the younger, and poorer, kids get, the less interested Locke seems in them. He seems particularly disinterested in the unavoidable truth that youngsters’ success in school depends on their being adequately fed and sheltered.
Some examples: There’s no new money for child care, despite a number of proposals. That missing child care, and further cutbacks in support services, will make life doubly difficult as people shoveled off welfare ($143 million in budget savings!) and into WorkFare find their jobs running out. The money for health care (the state’s Basic Health Plan), even after a $73 million boost from the tobacco settlement, is unlikely to keep pace with the rapidly rising costs of the program, much less address all those shut out of the program in the two years since the last round of slashed benefits and drastically increased premiums. There’s also a shortfall in the children’s Medicaid program, to be made up by—surprise!–payments from their impoverished parents. And the budget line for shelter for farmworker families is $8 million; for an estimated 157,000 farmworkers needing permanent housing in the state, that comes to a pitiful $51 per person.
Of the new social policy monies proposed in Locke’s budget, 92 percent are earmarked for education; only 8 percent go to social services. There’s virtually nothing at all for such categories as the environment (remember the salmon?). Locke’s budget, like previous years, has plenty of cuts: $4.7 million from the Housing Trust Fund; $6 million from the Medically Indigent Program; 2 percent (amount to be determined) from Mental Health. This is essentially a Republican budget—most notably in the money Locke declines to spend and the tax revenue he’s declining to collect.
The other notable aspect of the budget is its corporate welfare. Much of the transportation money is dedicated to helping shipping, not rush-hour traffic. And there are gems like a new program that would exempt B&O taxes—in some cases, all of them—for high-tech companies that move from wealthier parts of the state to timber-ravaged rural counties. (This wouldn’t create new jobs, merely shift them.) And there isn’t even an estimate in the budget of what the industry windfall would be in revenues the state would not collect.
There isn’t room in this column to do a full analysis of what’s not in Locke’s budget, or why, in a time of remarkable economic plenty, there’s still plenty of corporate welfare while help for the poorer (of which there’s still no shortage) continues to shrink. But the less-government, corporate-friendly approach is essentially Republican economics without the Christian social agenda. Since Republicans generally do this sort of thing better than Democrats, the Dems had better hope that this “education” shtick works, and that the economic good times continue. Otherwise, voters are likely to forget why, exactly, they wanted a change. Or despair of ever actually getting one.
The State of the Secretary
And then there’s Secretary of State Ralph Munro, who should have gotten a lot more attention—of the negative kind—for his amazing proposal this month to ban the hiring for state jobs of people who use tobacco products. Granted, smoking is obnoxious. But can you imagine the outcry if it were the Craswell crowd, in office, demanding that the state not hire gays? Or anyone whose relationship with a live-in partner wasn’t consecrated by God? Munro’s idea—all for the benefit of “the kids,” of course—is just as offensive, putting the state in the business of punishing people for legal behavior in their private lives. It’s easy to get away with suggesting it, because smokers are social pariahs these days. But it’s a bad idea and a nasty precedent.
