Looking Ahead to Monday's Special Session

Expectations couldn't be lower for the special session if majority Democrats were a pick-up team of high school hoopsters facing the Kentucky Wildcats. For a good snapshot of the problems they face, read Sunday's Seattle Times profile of Sen. Rodney Tom.

Tom irritated many of his fellow Democratics — and diminished his power as a top budget negotiator — when he voted against his own caucus' budget and an $800 million tax package to pay for it.

Tom's dissent is just one example of the difficulty facing Democrats as they try to cobble together a menu of tax increases and cuts to close the state's $2.8 billion budget gap.

Democrats hold huge legislative majorities, outnumbering Republicans 61-37 in the House and 31-18 in the Senate. But that doesn't mean Democrats all agree on how to fix the budget. Some, like Tom, think they should cut more before raising taxes.

Read the whole piece. It captures well the internal conflicts in a fractious caucus.

The News Tribune's Sunday editorial calls this the legislature's last chance to show restraint, an accurate assessment though it comes with low probabilities of success. How low?

Biblical creation took seven days, including down time. Getting the Legislature to pass a responsible budget in the same time frame might take a miracle of similar proportions.

From the Creation narrative in the lede, the editorial writers show us a picture of a fiery finish.

The House’s outsized appetite for spending and the Senate’s willingness to tax could be a match made in taxpayer hell.

Democratic leaders still have time to listen to the moderates within their own party who want to see more reliance on cuts and less on tax increases.

But as the Times piece shows, moderates in the Senate may quickly be marginalized.

The Columbian editorial board, getting right to the point, comments on lawmakers tiring of smearing lipstick on their budget pigs. And then they get nasty:

But it now appears inevitable that lawmakers will decide on some kind of scheme for extracting more money from taxpayers at the worst of times: during the Great Recession.

“We had no other choice” might make some kind of sense if legislators had declared a fiscal emergency and renegotiated state union contracts as provided by law. But they did not. It might make sense if they had privatized the state liquor industry. But they did not. It might make sense if they had stopped granting steep increases in pay to state workers. But they did not. It might make sense if they had made state government smaller. But they did not, as evidenced by a Seattle Times headline: “Despite cuts, state spending actually on track to go up.”

Instead of austerity, the people got lots of lipstick, none of it pale pastels. Senate Democrats seem to favor the hideous hot pink of a sales-tax increase, apparently shunning the appalling purple of a state income tax. House Democrats prefer the putrid scarlet of a cigarette tax increase.

They close by citing other editorial criticism from around the state.

At AWB's Olympia Business Watch blog, Jason Hagey offers a good look at issues that may come back next week.

Nothing gets better for lawmakers as time passes, one reason I thought they'd somehow wrap up in 60 days. But, to quote the Columbian, they did not.

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