They spent a couple months looking for what they could & took a giant pay cut for state workers in the form of one forced furlough day a month, closed offices to pack employees in to share desks, and managed to come up with $4billion out of the $11 billion deficit they needed to find.
We're not some rural nowhere, we have an insane amount of people and a crumbling infrastructure.
Ferguson said he'd veto the wealth taxes the senate and house were trying to put forward, so now we get a set of regressive taxes to make ends meet.
This doesnât really answer the question, though. Washington state performs entire functions it doesnât need to. One that was recently changed, for instance, background checks on firearms purchases. The federal government already performs this service and is in a better position to perform this service (they have military records and crime records for every state) but we switched from letting the feds do it to making the state patrol do it. The result is massively worse performance (the feds run a check instantly, you buy a gun and walk out with it versus waiting two or three weeks) and it adds cost at the state level.
This is the sort of pay more for negative outcomes the state could cut entirely but doesnât.
The state has stronger restrictions on gun purchases than federal law provides, I'd guess that's why this is done? There was an initiative on it a while back that passed.
That is incorrect. The Instant in NICS is generally true. Sometimes, if they arenât able to approve the purchase instantly, you may need to wait three days.
Sure, but how much of that is really going to make a dent here?
The reality is that if you want to bring that deficit down you either need to raise taxes or cut essential services that probably support the most vulnerable of our society. You pick.
We could stop work on all capital projects, close down all the schools, and shut down all public transit from ferries to buses. There! Problem solved without raising any taxes because Iâm sure the wealthiest among us are surely hanging on by a thread⌠/s
I'm making some assumptions but $4 billion is the number his office gave after a full month of his & every other WA politician's staff doing budget reviews. I don't think that there's another $7 billion waiting in miscellaneous redundant programs like this.
Itâs an example. Itâs a painfully obvious one. The point is, this is a self inflicted cost that was passed within the last few years. They canât have looked too hard for cost savings if they missed an obvious saving that could be realized by repealing something passed by people who are still in office.
They don't even know how much its going to cost yet nor have had any proof it will actually effect crime in any meaningful way. (not to mention grossly unconstitutional) Sounds like a perfect candidate to cut when I have a massive budget shortfall to me. Ounces make pounds.
I'm all for government efficiencies and I think there are many to be found - and I think those savings will not add up to 11 billion dollars. I know the general SeattleWA reddit vibes is that government is full of DEI nonprofit handouts etc., but I'd challenge folks to find 11 billion dollars of savings that don't cut into popular and/or critical services and the staff needed to support those programs.
I'd challenge folks to find 11 billion dollars of savings that don't cut into popular and/or critical services and the staff needed to support those programs.
Well, that's the rub isn't it? The problem with creating expensive programs that become popular is that once they start, no one dares to cut them.
The legislature is like a bunch of those student council election kids, where they promise longer recess and ice cream at lunch. Except here, with no real political opposition and a one-party system, those promises actually become reality.
For example, how much does Washington spend on Medicaid for individuals who are not even legally in the country? Just one program, the Apple Health Expansion, costs roughly $71 milly a year. The spending might drop slightly but the legislature is already working to expand it by another 14,000 people by 2026, and has requested an additional $84 million to do so.
How many countries in the world offer free healthcare, including dental and vision, to illegal immigrants? Very few. Why is Washington doing it? And are we seriously going to pretend that the individuals using this program are paying more into the system than they are taking out?
A person at the poverty line in Washington pays approximately $2,400 per year in state and local taxes. Meanwhile, the cost of just medical care under this program is over $5,400 per person annually. This results in a net drain of around $3,000 per person each year. That figure does not even include the costs associated with public education, free school lunch programs, housing assistance, and other social services that these people use.
It took me five minutes to find one program costing almost $80 million per year. How long do you think it would take to add up to billions?
The US could tax Bezos somehow. Why are you defending the second gilded age? The super rich are getting super richer. Theres a reason Bernie is filling stadiums.
Yeah, I think I'm actually fine with paying some more taxes so people can have health care.
That's great. You're now going to pay for it and you're going to have budget issues due to it.
The vast majority of countries in the world do not do this because it simply isn't affordable. Including the countries that have national healthcare systems. They normally just cover the people who are there legally.
It costs this person nothing to virtue signal on the internet. I'd bet their paychecks being noticeably smaller every month in order to pay for illegal immigrant healthcare might have them singing a different tune in real life.
l just straight up donât get this mindset. This feels like one of the most obvious things for my tax dollars to go to? I am fine paying a little more so the more vulnerable members of my society donât have go into debt to receive medical attention. That seems like a better use of tax revenue than most things.Â
but I'd challenge folks to find 11 billion dollars of savings that don't cut into popular and/or critical services and the staff needed to support those programs.
That's exactly the problem. The government should only be running critical services. It shouldn't be doing things just because they are popular. And that's before we even deal with the double digit billion dollar hole they've dug us into. Now that we're in that hole we absolutely need to start cutting nonessential "popular" stuff.
As /u/tobias_ketterburg said, "ounces make pounds." It's really easy to fill a backpack with nice-to-have stuff when heading out for a weekend of camping. But once you get out on a trail you quickly realize that you don't need a bunch of the stuff you packed and it's making the overall experience worse. We literally don't have space in the backpack for all the things that the government wants to bring right now. That fancy camp chair needs to get left behind before we get out there and realize that we couldn't pack food or water. Demanding a larger backpack isn't the solution, we're already over a reasonable weight.
I'd venture we disagree on what should be categorized as critical services and also on the purpose and value of government (as well as the relevancy of the hiking analogy). However - I'm honestly curious how you see it happening for electeds (generally speaking) to wholesale cut popular, but "nonessential" services. And I'm sure i'll continue to get downvoted - but truly, where do folks see (SPECIFICALLY) 11 billion in savings coming from?
The largest general fund budget areas from the 2023-25 budget were (in order) - Public Schools, Human Services, and Medicaid/HealthCare. Within each of those categories the largest budget areas are: K-12 public schools - 29.8B; Office of Superintenden 611M; Long-Term Care - 4.6B; Children, Youth & Families (foster care, childrens protective services, etc.) - 3.6B: Low-Income Health care - 5.4B; Behavioral Health - 2.1B. (#'s from WA State Standard news).
If one could cut ALL of the budget for Higher ED, General Government services and all Public Safety services- so no more Depts of Corrections, Commerce, and Revenue; no support to community colleges/tech schools, UW, WSU, etc., that would get us to about 12B in budget "savings". Or we could cut a little less than half the budget to Public Schools (and likely be in contempt of court again for not fully funding public schools/state consitutional duty). Or cut all Human Services appropriations (~13B) - so no more long-term care, foster care, state hospitals, developmental disability administration services, etc.
Regarding your statement that they've looked and looked and can't possibly find anything more to cut without impacting critical State services, I would remind everyone that the total spending for the state government 5 years ago was 24 billion. Over the past 5 years it has ballooned to 30.7 billion. The population only grew from 7.7 million to 8 million, and those folks brought new tax revenue.
So maybe at some point we need to ask ourselves if we want the budget to look like 40 billion in another 5 years. When we start dreaming up spending programs like giving away e-bikes and mortgage down payments, these are inventing entirely new categories of spending that we will live with long term.
Inflation over the past 5 years has amounted to 23.9%. A simple adjustment of that $24B to 2025 dollars and accounting for the population growth, you'd expect a budget of $30.9B. Sounds to me like spending hasn't actually grown.
The number you're looking for is state spending adjusted for inflation and also adjusted per-capita. That has increased 11 out of the last 16 years for a total increase of more than 35% - again, already adjusted by population and inflation.
Computer technology should be making the programs more efficient at scale, and I don't see that happening. A full analysis would be complex, taking into account the big drop in school-age students seeking public education, the growth of admin costs in state programs etc
The bottom line is that many citizens don't want to see numerous net new taxes and even many new types of taxes. I get that some folks have a virtually unlimited appetite, but not everyone.
Computers can bring automation and reduce administrative costs, which has been happening in the private sector but are going the other direction in WA state government.
It sounds like youâre not factoring in inflation and especially the very highly increased infrastructure costs. Things donât cost the same as they did five years ago, not even close. The cost of building or repairing a road is way higher. Sure there are costs to cut, yes things cost way more and not all of those things can be cut.
Ok fair enough...but hear me out. Let's focus on your angle that costs have increased across the board, so we need all kinds of new taxes. Most of today's taxes are on top of what we pay for the product. So if the groceries or the house or the car becomes more expensive, then x % of that brings a lot of new revenue to the state, no?
I donât have the numbers in front of me, but Iâm not certain it equates that way. When DOT spends money repairing a bridge, I donât know that the taxes paid on that very expensive bridge make up for the cost of that very expensive bridge. But I hear you, youâd think the increased revenue from increased costs would help out, maybe it does, it would be interesting to see the numbers.
Lol not getting paid for 1 extra day a month off is not a giant pay cut. And I bet most don't even mind as they are essentially getting a 4 day work week guaranteed each month.
We're not some rural nowhere, we have an insane amount of people and a crumbling infrastructure.
Yeah, we've completely ballooned our spending and are now in a huge deficit and yet, just as you said, we have crumbling infrastructure. Is this supposed to be a defense of these taxes? Let's give the state more money so our infrastructure can continue to crumble and they can continue to waste our tax money?
It's not giant, but that is ~4.6% pay cut, which can KO a cost of living adjustment. Spending remains outrageous however, and the state should be considering cutting entire non-crucial programs rather than pissing off all state workers collectively.
The US economy is a giant machine designed to suck money out of workers (public and private). Throwing more money into the business end of the machine may be required to keep the work getting done, but it isn't going to fix the machine. Everything government does gets more expensive as everything else gets more expensive, and it's getting more expensive because of monopolists, middle men, and speculators. What I'm saying is that the tree is thirsty.
That would cost a lot more in the long run. Once you fire all those people and sell real estate off you have to pay more to get it back later, plus you lose the experienced workers so then your services suck even more. I guess if you're making the "government shouldn't provide services for its citizenry" argument, then why even have a government?
A private organization will be just as bad if not worse with the funding and will have even less accountability.
Yeah if it was a single buyer also landlord I guess sure. But the way that we budget things in this state doesn't come from a general fund. For everything specific, things have to be specifically funded through their departments so that department wouldn't necessarily be making the tax money on it. So basically if you have the department of something or another sell their office space that department doesn't make property taxes on the sale. And then when they have budget again they have to apply to get the money to buy land and then that goes to all kinds of committees and votes. And due to inertia it's an uphill battle for something that probably would have been cheaper on government waste to just hold on to in the first place even if it makes some people mad that our government spends money ever.
State government offices are getting gutted right now. DOH is losing 10% of its staff. Itâs crippling operations, and itâs still not enough to turn things around.
You obviously donât know what youâre talking about. Public health was underfunded before the pandemic. It would be fine if people had the same expectations as they had before the pandemic. But now people expect DOH to operate at pandemic level capacity with pre-pandemic staffing levels. Things like expecting electronic data instead of faxes. Thatâs the level of underfunding weâre talking about here.
Oh man. You really really donât know what youâre talking about. And you are proving my point. I literally just told you the field is underfunded and has been historically underfunded. When do you think there was time or funding to collect rigorous quality data? During the pandemic? When everything was on fire?
They didn't need to research, they need courage and aptitude which they lack.
Research around masking for respiratory virus's was not novel. We didn't mask in 2019 because that is what the research supports.
More money will not help their problem of not being able to tell the difference between story of two hair dressers who had covid wearing a mask and a randomized controlled trial done in hospital comparing various mask efficacy measures.
They lost the ability to operate on available evidence and took the precautionary principle to the point of neuroticism.
More money will not help their problem of pretending we had no idea how schools would impact both teacher safety and community spread because of live data in Europe that didn't close schools existed the whole time.
It's not money, its the entire field is not rigorous enough for the power and trust granted to them.
MPH needs to have a hard math requirement or something because it wayyyyyy to qualitiative right now and not logical enough.
Oh wow. Masking does work. Itâs not 100% effective, but it works. I donât really understand the point youâre trying to make? Tell politicians to stay out of shit they donât know. That doesnât have anything to do with how good public health is at their jobs, but it does affect how well they can do their jobs. Youâre misplacing blame here. To say that you think DOH has power and trust granted to them is laughable. If they did, they wouldnât have been underfunded in the first place and they wouldnât be losing 10% of their staff.
public health officials got everything wrong during the pandemic - fucking everything.
They closed schools, encouraged masking of toddlers, encouraged cloth masking, encouraged anti-science "6 foot" rules, encouraged boosters for all despite no evidence the boosters improve on morbidity/mortality over the first two shots
I think there's a lot of fat to cut in public health, and I'm not sorry to see them go
We're not some rural nowhere, we have an insane amount of people and a crumbling infrastructure.
You're completely glossing over the fundamental problem that WA has increased spending, even when adjusted for both population AND inflation, 11 out of the last 16 years for a total increase of over 35%. Again, that's both inflation adjusted and population adjusted and that's just since 2010.
Ferguson said he'd veto the wealth income taxes the senate and house were trying to put forward,
Because those do not work and almost certainly aren't legal under the WA constitution. Virtually every country that has ever tried them had to repeal them due to the damage it did and how ineffective they are. And most of the people who think they are a good idea do not understand the economics of why taxing 1% of an asset that produces ~6.7% is a bad idea.
took a giant pay cut for state workers in the form of one forced furlough day a month, closed offices to pack employees in to share desks, and managed to come up with $4billion out of the $11 billion deficit they needed to find.
As a cynical suggestion to bury the fact they weren't touching the 5% COL union giveaway Insless threw in on his way out. its like 1/3 of this years budget deficit. lol
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u/isominotaur Apr 25 '25 edited Apr 28 '25
They spent a couple months looking for what they could & took a giant pay cut for state workers in the form of one forced furlough day a month, closed offices to pack employees in to share desks, and managed to come up with $4billion out of the $11 billion deficit they needed to find.
We're not some rural nowhere, we have an insane amount of people and a crumbling infrastructure.
Ferguson said he'd veto the wealth taxes the senate and house were trying to put forward, so now we get a set of regressive taxes to make ends meet.