45th District Lawmakers Talk About "Painful" Cuts in State Budget

When State lawmakers reached a deal for a two-year $32 billion budget last week, it was a deal not agreed to lightly, according to representatives from the 45^th District.

“After cutting $10-12 billion from our last budget, cutting another $5 billion from our next, was painful, sobering and very contentious,” said Rep. Larry Springer (D-Kirkland).  “The toughest part was balancing our unprecedented funding cuts between K-12 education, crucial safety net services like food programs for hungry families, and funding Higher Education which ironically is the way out of joblessness for thousands of Washingtonians. The only good news is that we got it done.”

The budget passed cuts teacher pay by almost 2 percent and cuts salaries for other K-12 and state employees by 3 percent.

“We cut K-12 the least,” said Rep. Roger Goodman (D-Kirkland). “But think of what proponents of the homeless, elderly, the infirmed and natural resources are feeling. It’s all on hold now we just don’t have the resources.”

While class size in grades K-12 will probably increase under the new budget (read the potential effects of the new budget on education, here), it was higher education that was hit hardest, according to Goodman.

“We decimated higher education, tuition hikes will be in the double digits, it’s effectively a tax on the middle class,” he added. “Voters put obstacles up to rising new revenue and the economy is still stagnant we found we had to make very painful cuts.”

Goodman defended the deep cuts saying there was no other way to balance the state’s budget. Further, Goodman dismissed the idea from some government critics who claim the state budget could be balanced by reigning in abuses and overspending.

“If citizens think we can balance the budget by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, we can’t,” he said. “Even if we rooted out every bit of that, it won’t be more than ten percent. We have a $6 billion deficit. It’s not about wasting the public’s money, commercial revenue and real estate sales are down and that’s what we depend on for revenue.”