Inslee offers more senseless reasoning on unbalanced budget

“The budget is as balanced as the people we represent would expect… The specks on the hind end of a long, long train here are not the things people are worried about. That is what I am convinced of.”

That’s what Jay Inslee – allegedly the person charged with governing Washington State – had to say about why he decided to that deficit spending was a good idea. Inslee created the deficit by vetoing several provisions in the bi-partisan supplemental budget sent to him by the legislature last month. His decision places the state budget more than $200 million in the red.

Before Inslee got his hands on the budget, our state enjoyed a balanced budget as stipulated by state law. Now, our state is in the red.

And all Inslee can do is make a senseless analogy about how abiding by state law is like a “speck” on the “hind end of a long, long train.” Previously, Inslee referred to the issue as “just sort of specks of sand on a huge beach.”

Rather than use longwinded, senseless analogies, GOP State Senator Andy Hill, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, offered some straight talk.

“We had a balanced budget. He vetoed it. It’s now out of whack… Frankly, I am angry because irresponsible budgets inevitably lead to cuts in education,” Hill said.

Hill’s perspective is important because it shatters Inslee’s excuse for vetoing the provisions.

Inslee claimed he is more concerned about the “expected cost of meeting a Supreme Court ruling ordering the state to fix the way it pays for education rather than balancing the supplemental budget over four years.” Everything else, apparently, is a “speck” on a huge beach/a long, long train.

But, as Hill points out, Inslee’s decision to place our state’s budget in the red only hurts education funding – and helps Democrats continue the obsession of arguing for tax increases. For decades, Democrats have produced similar irresponsible budgets that, in the end, raised taxes, made state government bigger, and harmed education funding.

There is no reason to assume that the irresponsible budget created by Inslee would produce a different result for education.