House Republican leaders on Friday unveiled their budget proposal, touting it as a package bridges the state’s existing $1.6 billion revenue gap while preserving essential services without relying on tax hikes, borrowing or gimmicks.

The heart of the plan is $839.5 million in spending reductions, including cuts to the Basic Health Plan, reorganization of the Disability Lifeline and requiring state employees to take a two-day, unpaid furlough every month.

“We’ve said from Day 1 that before there’s any talk of a huge sales tax increase, there needs to be a discussion on state priorities — the core services of government,” said Rep. Gary Alexander (R-Olympia), ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. “I don’t know if that’s happened in other caucuses, but I know our caucus spent countless hours during the September special session and earlier during this session developing our priorities and specifically defining each one.

“This budget,” he said, “is a direct reflection of that effort.”

In order to make up the difference between the amount of income the state anticipates collecting over the next two years and how much the Legislature decided to spend in last year’s budget, the House GOP plan assumes:

• $63 million in savings from fund transfers;
• $160 million from reversions;
• $64 million from reduced distributions to local governments;
• $336 million from redued caseloads;
• $36 million from the repeal of three tax exemptions;
• $25.9 million in from the sale of surplus property; and,
• $839.5 million in actual spending cuts.

The budget would also leave a reserve of $650 million.

“It’s an all-priorities budget that funds the core services of government,” Alexander said, “which we believe are education, protecting the public and protecting the most vulnerable.”

The plan would spend $580 million more on education than the “all-cuts” budget Gov. Christine Gregoire put forward in November. Ironically, not even the governor herself endorsed that budget; just days after unveilng her package, she proposed a temporary half-cent sales tax to “buy back” many of the reductions her plan had included.

“We don’t need to buy back any education cuts, because we’re not making any in the first place,” Alexander said.

“The key is that we’re reducing administrative costs at the state level,” said Rep. Bruce Dammeier (R-Puyallup), who noted that the GOP plan fully funds levy equalization — money sent by the state to smaller school districts whose property values don’t allow them to raise as much money in school levies as more affluent communities can.

“Rather than attaching a lot of strings,” he said, “we’re simply giving local districts more in the first place. We think they know better than we do how to spend the money.”

The Republican plan sets aside $40 million more than the governor’s proposal for public safety programs while requiring no early release or less community supervision of criminals. It also outspends the governor by $89 million in programs for the elderly, disabled mentally ill and children.

At the same time, it reduces from 60 to 48 months the amount of time one can collect Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) benefits.

“We need to empower our communities to do many of these things for themselves,” said Rep. Maureen Walsh (R-Walla Walla). “We don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on studies and task forces. We need to give our communities the resources and incentives they need and get out of their way.

“I think we’re going to be pleasantly surprised by what they can accomplish,” she said.

“If you were going to put together a budget that asked the state of Washington to live within its means and invested only in programs that directly benefited people, what would that look like?” asked Rep. Charles Ross (R-Naches). “We think it would look a lot like this.

“The people of Washington are yearning for a position that makes sense,” he said. “This one does.”

House Democrats, as well as Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, are expected to release their own budget recommendations next week.

“I’ve shown our budget to the governor and all the other caucuses,” Alexander said. “I can’t tell you what they think of it, but I can tell you that when I showed it to (House Ways and Means Chair Ross Hunter, D-Medina), he started scribbling notes in the margin he could use in his own plan.”

This entry was posted on February 17, 2012 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Budget & Taxes, Economy, Elections, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.