Citizen Taxpayers rallied against the repeal of taxpayer protections and the imposition of tax increases. These are the voters who will not forget.
The Senate Dems came up with the votes and sent the operating budget to the House with the minimum 25 votes. The Democrats have so many members that six of them were "let off" the vote. No Democrat in a swing district up for election this year wanted to vote for the budget!
I don't know if TVW showed the hand gestures going on between Senators Chris Marr (D) Spokane and Claudia Kaufmann (D) Kent.
"You!"..."Me?" "No you!"..."You will be the 25th Yes vote! Not me!"
The Senate had their votes but the House is in disarray. It is harder to buy out twice the amount in the House as needed in the Senate. Part of the interest here is figuring out what some of them got for their vote!
It is likely that there will be a special session. NO ONE wants this! The Democrats MUST write a balanced budget because unlike the nearly bankrupt California, Washington's Constitution allows no debt.
We could be called back into special session by the governor the very next day. Unlikely.
We could go into a rolling recess...coming in every third day.
We could wait for the call...the sign that an agreement between the two houses and the governor has been reached. Then we would all be notified to return for the vote. (This is the wisest and least expensive for taxpayers. It costs a lot of money to be in session even for a day.)
This may be the first written prediction....
2 comments:
And this is my problem with career politicians...not voting for what their constituents want, just what their party wants. I'm seeing that across the country on the health care issue. Neither party should care what the lobbyists or the unions or the upper career echelon wants more than the people who voted them in. I wish you could let your coworkers know that they shouldn't stress so much about the voting game :) They're all going to be voted out at the first opportunity and should really focus on doing the right thing instead of the self serving thing.
Washington doesn't do bond issues for financing public improvements etc?
California's legislature isn't allowed to do an unbalanced budget either but we put in the state constitution that they need a super majority (two-thirds) to pass it or property taxes. But I'll bet the next initiative will be to limit debt financing.
Post a Comment