Is it over-spending or a budget deficit?
Depends on who you ask when it comes to the current biennial budget debate in the Washington State Legislature in Olympia.
Various news reports have projected a $12-$14 billion budget shortage for Washington.
State Senator, Chris Gildon (R-Puyallup), requested a revenue and spending assessment amid this dispute in the Legislature and tells KVI listeners that the “budget shortfall” is $6.7 billion. Gildon cites numbers from the non-partisan State Senate budget staff–from “people with political blinders on”.
To hear Gildon’s math and what that means for the political push to cut spending or raise taxes in the current Legislative session, click the play button below.
KVI’s John Carlson says of the Olympia budget battle, “No, there’s not really a deficit at all. There’s definitely a shortfall from the amount of money they wanted to spend but in terms of regular income the state’s getting more (tax) money this year than it got last year. And its anticipated they’ll get more next year than this year and more money the year after that than next year. So what’s the deficit? The deficit is they want spending to increase many times higher than inflation. So, the gap between what they want to spend versus the (tax) money coming in–that’s the ‘air quotes’ deficit.”
