Jay Inslee deserves the Washington State version of PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award, Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat wrote recently, for breaking his campaign promise to veto new taxes. As Shift reported, candidate Inslee once said that he “would veto anything that heads the wrong direction, and the wrong direction is new taxes in the state of Washington.” Last week, Governor Inslee proposed $1.5 billion in new taxes.
We agree, Inslee has clearly earned his “Lie of the Year” – but for more reasons than Westneat noted.
The columnist is absolutely correct that Inslee lied and that Inslee the Governor is not who Inslee the Candidate said he’d be. As Westneat points out, Inslee’s new tax proposal breaks his promise, but he’d already done so. In his first session in 2013, he proposed extending temporary taxes and adding new ones, including a new tax on beer.
With his “veto taxes” lie out of the way, Inslee is now setting up the Big Lie. Inslee’s new budget proposal is based around this Big Lie, namely, that “circumstances have changed” that caused him to propose new taxes. That’s a lie; Inslee always knew he wanted to raise taxes.
Yesterday, on KOMO radio, he laid out the premises of his Big Lie.
1. Inslee hoped to avoid proposing new taxes because he supported ending some tax exemptions. As anyone, including former Democratic Governor Chris Gregoire could tell you, closing so-called tax loopholes doesn’t gain you much revenue – certainly not as much as Democrats want to spend. In fact, Inslee previously proposed ending tax breaks worth a few hundred million dollars, but wants to spend billions more in his budget proposal.
2. The state Supreme Court is forcing the state to spend more on schools and mental health. He’s right that the mental health decision is new, and it will cost the state around $60 million. But that’s not what’s driving state spending.
The big-ticket item there is the McCleary education case. When Inslee discusses it, he purposely talks about the contempt hearing the Supreme Court held this year so as not to remind you that the McCleary case itself was decided back in 2012. That means the court had already ruled that the Democrats in charge of Olympia for decades had underfunded schools before Inslee made his “veto taxes” pledge during his campaign. It’s not a “new circumstance” by any stretch.
3. The state has already saved hundreds of millions of dollars by implementing lean management. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Senate budget chair Andy Hill, Inslee didn’t use any of his so-called lean management savings to help taxpayers. He just spent it on more state government. Hill told the Times, “In the last two budgets I’ve written, he’s resisted violently booking any savings based on lean management. It was a hard no.”
All we can assume from Inslee’s Big Lie setup is that he knew he would need to spend billions more for education, but he didn’t want to tell voters he’d raise taxes to fit it into the state budget. So the question is, what else is he trying to fit into the budget that requires his massive tax increases?
That’s pretty obvious. The whopping $1.5 billion price tag for employee pay raises are the real reason Inslee wants $1.5 billion in new taxes. Inslee could not pass on the opportunity to reward his million dollar campaign donors—even at the expense of his promise to voters.
So will the people of the state of Washington believe Jay’s Big Lie? Or will the truth – $1.5 billion in new taxes for $1.5 billion in pay raises to Jay’s top campaign contributors – be obvious enough?
