No to Yes Budget

Call it the Yes Budget. Our Democratic Legislature is about to raise state spending over the next two years by 12 percent. That figure, reached by saying yes to far too many appeals, is higher than the private economy can possibly grow and will fall heavily on selected parts of it.

The previous budget, designed by state Sen. Dino Rossi and Gov. Gary Locke, raised spending by 4 percent. That was done by saying no to state employees, no to teachers and no to many others. That was painful to them, but it gave breathing room to the battered economy. The economy has improved. State revenue in the new biennium will be up 7 percent. The state can now begin to say yes, selectively. It cannot afford to triple the growth rate in state spending all at once.

Certainly, that was not what voters had in mind last year. Democratic primary voters were offered a candidate who wanted to raise taxes and a candidate who didn't, and they chose the candidate, the current governor, who didn't. Republicans chose a candidate who said he wouldn't.

The election was the closest in history, but the Democrats won the governor's seat and both houses of the Legislature. Now they can pass a budget without any Republican votes.

One obstacle remained: Initiative 601, passed by the people in 1993. It required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes, which effectively required bipartisan support. But the initiative itself could be modified by a simple majority and Democrats, possessing that majority, have now done that. Initiative 601 is effectively gone. The door opens for nearly half a billion dollars in new taxes.

The Yes Budget comes with an increased tax on people who buy cigarettes and people who buy liquor — a measure that will promote the public health, probably, though that is not the motive.

A proposed tax would hit people who play gambling games at cardrooms — a promotion of public morality, perhaps, though it applies only to non-tribal cardrooms.

A new death tax, rising to 16 percent of assets, is levied on children who inherit businesses and property from parents who have died, which will unfairly force heirs to sell family businesses they had hoped to operate.

The Yes Budget also comes with a gaggle of gimmicks. The worst of these is a postponement of money the state is legally obligated to pay into employee pension plans. This is the sort of banana-republic finance done in an emergency — except that there is no emergency. A 12-percent increase in spending, financed this way, is not sustainable.

There will be another billion-dollar gap two years hence. Legislators know it and ignore it. One party has power, and it wants a Yes Budget. It is a painful lesson in the risk of one-party government.