Senate unveils spending plan
OLYMPIA – Saying it’s time to tighten belts but not to panic, the state Senate’s chief budget writer on Tuesday unveiled a supplemental budget plan that would spend $319 million, much of it on education and flood relief.
Like last week’s proposal by the House of Representatives, the plan would leave more than $750 million in state savings.
“I was a Depression kid,” said Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Renton. “I believe in living within our means.”
The $750 million “is the second-most money we have ever left behind” for coming years, said Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver.
The Senate plan also would steer more money into health care, criminal justice and housing, as well as create new tax breaks for aerospace suppliers, beekeepers and others.
The plan calls for a smaller teacher pay increase – about 4 percent instead of 5 percent – than the House budget proposed last week. But the Senate bill doesn’t delay additional full-day kindergarten classes, like House budget writers want to do.
Prentice said that lawmakers could revisit higher teacher pay next year, but that she didn’t want to suspend all-day kindergarten plans now to pay for it. “I think the public would be justifiably outraged if we did that,” she said.
Other key differences from the House plan:
•The Senate budget would steer $21 million more into the Learning Assistance Program to help struggling students.
•It provides $10 million to community mental health providers for services not covered by Medicaid.
•It would cut $5 million from the Opportunity Grant program, which helps lower-income adults pay for community college.
The Senate’s construction budget, also released Tuesday, would spend $107 million more, about half of which is for protection from future catastrophic flooding in Western Washington. It would boost affordable housing programs – although not as much as the House plan – with a third of the money slated for flood victims.
Prentice called the budget frugal and responsible; Republicans disagreed. Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, said it continues a Democratic trend of overspending. After recent large budget increases, the Senate’s nonpartisan budget staff has estimated that the state could face a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall in the next budget cycle.
“Many of the things in this budget might be nice to do, but are they really priorities if they end up putting us into a deficit?” Zarelli said. The economy, he said, cannot support the spending commitments the state has made in the past three years.
“We don’t have a revenue problem,” he said. “We have a spending problem.”
Democrats said the budget is easy to criticize until you get to specifics. Do Republicans really want to cut things like education or children’s health care, Pridemore asked.
“You tell me where to cut,” he said.