Lawmakers Want To Wrap Up Special Session Leaders From Both Parties Meet To Revive Collapsed Budget Talks
Legislative leaders on Tuesday set this weekend as their adjournment goal, but they conceded the conservative House and moderate Senate still are far apart on budget and tax levels.
A day after budget talks collapsed, legislative leaders, budget and tax negotiators and party caucus chairmen huddled in House Speaker Clyde Ballard’s office to figure out a way to jump-start the negotiations and wrap up the special session.
Leaders committed both parties and both houses to beating the adjournment deadline of next Tuesday night - and by the weekend if at all possible.
“We are going to make a concerted effort to end the session this weekend,” said Senate Majority Leader Marcus Gaspard, D-Puyallup.
Ballard, an East Wenatchee Republican, added, “We don’t want to get to Tuesday and have no wiggle room, so we are shooting for the weekend. If you stumble, you still have Monday and Tuesday (to wrap up).”
One clear sign of their seriousness: Cooks have been ordered to stop providing hot meals to lawmakers in their members-only cafeterias.
But leaders had no clear plan for how to resolve the big differences over the state budget and how large a tax-cut package to approve. Both said top-level talks would continue but that negotiating committees would draft the deals.
Asked which comes first, the tax deal or the budget, Senate Majority Caucus Chairman Sid Snyder, D-Long Beach, said they must be resolved together, because the level of taxes determines the level available for spending, just as spending decisions decide how much is left for tax relief.
“Budget and taxes - the chicken and the egg - will come at the same time,” he said.
The Republican-controlled House has passed a $17.3 billion two-year spending plan and doesn’t want to go much above that. The House proposes a $738 million tax cut, mostly for business and property owners. The Senate, with a one-vote Democratic majority, has passed a $17.9 billion budget and endorses a $264 million tax cut for manufacturing construction and equipment and for medical equipment and non-prescription drugs. The leaders also agreed to begin clearing the decks of must-do legislation - or at least to bring the bills to a vote.