Schoesler statement on adoption of operating
budget for 2009-11

April 25, 2009

OLYMPIA…Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, who serves on the Senate Ways and Means Committee, issued this statement regarding the 2009-11 operating budget passed today by the Senate, completing the Legislature’s work on the new spending plan: 

“This budget leaves many of state government’s sacred cows alive and grazing on the lawns of the Capitol grounds. 

 “The Legislature had plenty of opportunity to do what I and other Senate and House Republicans and the governor advised: reduce spending quickly through policy changes and reforms to expensive programs. That would have done much to prevent the cuts made in this budget. I’ve heard it said Republicans wanted larger spending reductions; the truth is we just wanted to reduce spending sooner and take advantage of the extra savings that would produce.  

“Just last fall the vice chairman of the Senate budget committee said the ‘best investment in our economic future is always education’ – yet the budget he co-wrote cuts nearly 800 million dollars from K-12 education. That’s the biggest hit to any one area and half again as much as the 500 million slashed from higher education. It didn’t have to be that way. I’m particularly disappointed that the 60 million dollars for levy equalization was eliminated. That support was critical for property-poor school districts, like some in our legislative district. We tried to restore that money tonight through an amendment that would make cost-saving reforms but the majority party was entrenched. 

“It’s interesting that this budget managed to ‘buy back’ some of the high-profile cuts in health and human services that were in the proposal we saw in committee just last week. When it finally realized the public is in no mood for tax increases, did the majority party decide to go ahead and fund the programs and services that would have been at the center of an effort to raise taxes?  

“Still, the majority party has some explaining to do. Who will tell this year’s high school graduate that the slot for him or her at Washington State University disappeared because it was more important to spend 788 thousand dollars for a study related to industrial-insurance pools? Who is going to tell a person who loses nursing-home care that it was more important to increase funding for the state Arts Commission? Who is going to tell 200 people they got bumped off the Basic Health Plan because the Department of Health wants to continue funding a survey that asks how often you eat carrots, or what your sexual orientation is, or whether you’ve ever used the Plan B pill? 

“Besides disagreeing with the choices made in the budget, I object to how the budget was put together behind closed doors and rammed through the voting process. It’s the next-to-last day of a 105-day legislative session and only this morning did most members of the Senate – Republican and Democrat, even most of us serving on the Senate budget committee – get their first look at the complete proposal. Yet we were expected to be ready to vote on a document of more than 500 complex pages within 12 hours, even though most of today was taken up voting on other legislation. There are rules for handling bills, and they ought to be followed.”

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Additional contact: Eric Campbell
at (360) 786-7503 or campbell.eric@leg.wa.gov