From my weekly column in tomorrow's paper:

OLYMPIA _ With less than three weeks to go in the legislative session, Democrats seem near-unanimous in being unhappy with the cuts in the budgets they're proposing.

But now, as the clocks ticks down, they're struggling to reach agreement on what new taxes _ if any _ to ask voters to approve in November.

Some lawmakers like the idea of a third-of-a-cent sales tax increase, probably coupled with an Earned Income Tax Credit-type state program* to ease the burden on low-income families. The money would be steered into nursing homes, health care, adult family care, mental health and other programs.

Gov. Chris Gregoire and some other lawmakers have been floating the idea of boosting the economy with a billion-dollar bond issue. The borrowed money would pay for fixing up schools. But how to pay off the debt? Still unclear.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, meanwhile, continues to make the case for a "high earners income tax." A worker's first $250,000 a year would be exempt. Above that, the worker would pay a yet-to-be-determined percentage as a state income tax.

"Our sales-tax-based tax system is the least fair tax system in the country," Brown wrote recently on her Senate blog, where she's aiming for a heart-to-heart with voters and policymakers. The tax structure here hammers lower- and middle-class families, she wrote, forcing them to pay far more than their fair share for things like schools and colleges.

She'd steer the dollars into schools and higher education, and use some to reduce property- and business taxes.

Brown's caught flak, both from local taxpayers and the press. The Seattle Times dismissed the idea as "fairy dust." An Everett Herald columnist dubbed her "Tax 'em Brown." Readers accused Brown,who's considering a run for governor, of trying to curry favor with Seattle liberals. Other readers called her an idiot,  a "lying political do-gooder" and a scumbag.

Brown says she's not afraid of a debate. She argues that 7 other states are considering a high-earners tax. She points out that people could deduct their state income tax from their federal dollars, "keeping their tax dollars here at home." And she dismisses the idea that Washington's millionaires will indignantly flee the state.

After all, Brown says, where would they go?

"If these families decided to go to Idaho, they'd have the privilege of paying 7.8 percent of their income in state taxes," she writes. "In Hawaii, they'd pay 8.25 percent. In Oregon, they'd pay 9 percent." And so on.

Perhaps Alaska, which has no income tax?

"I doubt it," wrote Brown. Washington's a good place to live, work and raise a family, she said _ and paying for good schools, safe neighborhoods and so forth "will help keep it that way."

So there's the argument. But so far, it's looking like a pretty lonely campaign. House Speaker Frank Chopp sounded mighty lukewarm recently, telling reporters "I'm for whatever the public will support in terms of this, and they might be open to that."

And Gov. Chris Gregoire clearly thinks the idea is a non-starter, at least in terms of solving the state's current budget mess. In her last campaign, she said Tuesday, "I saw no appetite whatsoever for a state income tax."

She's not convinced that a tax on the wealthy would change that, she said.

For one thing, Gregoire said, people "think that tomorrow it's possible that will be them" making $250,000 a year, she said. "And I like to have them have that hope."

Secondly, she said, "people believe that it's a crack in the door to a bigger agenda."

But her chief objection, she says, is a practical one. Given the almost-certain court fight that would result even if voters approve an income tax in November, it's unlikely that the state would see the money in time to help out with this two-year budget crisis.

"We'll be well past this recession by the time that all gets done," she said.

*The Olympian's Adam Wilson highlights a possible flaw in the offset-a-sales-tax-hike-with-a-tax-credit argument: The state has no computer system set up to pay out the tax credits that are envisioned. As Wilson writes on his blog, the earliest start date for those payments would be January 2011

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