Jolt
The End of Sustainability
Today's Loser: Budget Sustainability
Obviously today's Jolt has to do with the $1.4 billion in revenue that's gone missing. (In case you missed it, Arun Raha, director of the State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, issued his latest revenue forecast with the news that the state has $1.4 billion less coming in than planned. The result? The 2011-13 budget, passed just four months ago, is $1.27 billion in the red).
The numbers call into question the most overused word of the last legislative session, if not the decade: "sustainable."[pullquote]It turns out, that even without crazy spending, the budget wasn't "sustainable." Which makes it obvious that the problem with the budget is not spending.[/pullquote]
The mantra on both the left and the right in Olympia this year was that by cutting and cutting (legislators cut $4.6 billion last session to balance the budget in the face of declining revenues), the budget would be "sustainable." No more of that crazy spending.
Here's state Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens)—one of the leaders of the budget conservatives on the Democratic side who helped give the Republicans the votes they needed to push an austere and "sustainable" budget plan— on his current campaign web site (he's running for the US House seat being vacated by Jay Inslee, D-WA, 1):
It turns out, that even without crazy spending, the budget wasn't "sustainable." Which makes it obvious that the problem with the budget is not spending. We are in a recession. When you are in a recession, the only way to sustain the budget is to bring in new revenue. Luckily, the way economics work, when the government can spend more, it eases out a recession. Funny how that can work.
And not funny, how all-cuts budgets don't work. Or, excuse us, aren't sustainable.
Obviously today's Jolt has to do with the $1.4 billion in revenue that's gone missing. (In case you missed it, Arun Raha, director of the State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, issued his latest revenue forecast with the news that the state has $1.4 billion less coming in than planned. The result? The 2011-13 budget, passed just four months ago, is $1.27 billion in the red).
The numbers call into question the most overused word of the last legislative session, if not the decade: "sustainable."[pullquote]It turns out, that even without crazy spending, the budget wasn't "sustainable." Which makes it obvious that the problem with the budget is not spending.[/pullquote]
The mantra on both the left and the right in Olympia this year was that by cutting and cutting (legislators cut $4.6 billion last session to balance the budget in the face of declining revenues), the budget would be "sustainable." No more of that crazy spending.
Here's state Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens)—one of the leaders of the budget conservatives on the Democratic side who helped give the Republicans the votes they needed to push an austere and "sustainable" budget plan— on his current campaign web site (he's running for the US House seat being vacated by Jay Inslee, D-WA, 1):
This year I helped guide our legislature through passage of the first truly bipartisan, sustainable budget in decades.
It turns out, that even without crazy spending, the budget wasn't "sustainable." Which makes it obvious that the problem with the budget is not spending. We are in a recession. When you are in a recession, the only way to sustain the budget is to bring in new revenue. Luckily, the way economics work, when the government can spend more, it eases out a recession. Funny how that can work.
And not funny, how all-cuts budgets don't work. Or, excuse us, aren't sustainable.
