Statement on the Governor's budget plan
Our Executive Director Remy Trupin released the following statement in response to the Governor's budget plan. “The plan rolled out by the Governor this morning is absolutely the wrong direction for Washington state. We cannot create jobs and get our economy back on track through deep cuts to education, health care, and social services. This one-sided, lopsided approach will do significant damage to the very things that make our state a good place to live, work, and do business.
Policymakers must take a balanced approach. We need to raise revenue now to address our immediate needs and make structural changes so that our revenue system is adequate and sustainable in the long-term. This includes eliminating ineffective tax breaks and temporarily increasing and permanently modernizing the state sales tax. In the long-term, we can enact a new tax on capital gains and strengthen our rainy day fund.
Budgets always require hard decisions, but a budget that cuts children, families, and older adults without any tax reform is not just a hard decision: it’s a bad decision.
Our state must make the public investments needed to create jobs and protect our communities. This cannot be done without additional revenue.”
Yesterday we released “A Framework for Prosperity,” which outlines what state lawmakers should do to fill this year's $1.3 billion deficit and make comprehensive changes to ensure our state's viability in the long term.
