As the legislature plods towards its scheduled adjournment next week, Frank Chopp’s House Democrats continue to rely on party-line votes to move their tax-and-spend budget approach. Though yesterday they only got through the spending part, putting the cart before the proverbial horse with a budget that depends on taxes not yet passed by the liberal House.
The state Senate took a different path, passing its budget last week without needing taxes and with votes from both Democrats and Republicans. Rational observers assume that the final budget negotiated next week will resemble this bi-partisan plan [link to Times editorial from Sunday on budget] instead of the House’s partisan document.
It is also assumed that, like President Obama’s just-released budget the House Democrats budget is only a campaign tactic, so liberals can go out on the stump and rail against heartless Republicans who don’t care about school kids. Yes, anyone paying attention would realize that it Democratically-controlled legislatures that have been underfunding public education for the last 30 years, but since when has the truth mattered much in their campaigns?
The hyperbole will only grow over the next week as Olympia shifts from semi-governing to full-time campaigning. However, before that transition is complete, it might be helpful to remind the public of perhaps most truthful statement about how liberals feel about taxpayers. It came from a longtime Democrat lobbyist, Nick Federici, speaking for the Our Economic Future coalition, a pro-income tax, organized labor front group. Arguing in favor a bottled water tax, which voters had repealed a couple years back, he channeled his best Marie Antoinette on behalf of the House Democrats: “If you don’t want to pay a water tax, then get it from the spigot.”
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