Deal made to shrink state budget deficit

Democratic and Republican lawmakers said Wednesday that they have reached an agreement on a package that patches more than half of an estimated $550 million deficit in this year's state budget.

The agreement trims several state programs, including the state's health-care program for the poor and aid for the disabled, as well as transfers funds from other programs. The plan cuts the deficit by about $370 million, with about $242 million in cuts and $125 million in transfers.

Lawmakers have spent more than a month of the 105-day legislative session trying to make a deal, and once this package is approved, Gov. Chris Gregoire and legislators will have to tackle an estimated $5 billion deficit in the next two-year budget, which is roughly $37 billion.

The agreements include maintaining cash grants to the Disability Lifeline program, but reducing them by 50 percent and moving to eliminating the cash grant in the next two-year budget; limiting enrollment of children to the state's Children's Health Program to families at 200 percent of the federal poverty level; and limiting eligibility to the Basic Health Plan to those who qualify for Medicaid, essentially filtering out illegal immigrants who may be on the plan.

The agreement was negotiated by Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate.

House Republican leaders, though, said their members, who are the minority, would not vote in favor of this package, pointing to education funding, in which $25 million were taken from class-size-reduction initiatives. They said they would have preferred eliminating the cash grants for Disability Lifeline, which provides cash and medical care to unemployable disabled adults who aren't covered by federal social-security benefits.