Gregoire: Pay No Attention To That Deficit Behind The Curtain

What does Washington governor Christine Gregoire know that no one else in state government knows? All throughout the gubernatorial campaign her Republican opponent, Dino Rossi, has accused the governor of a profligate spending spree that has driven the state’s balance sheet deep into the red with deeper shades of crimson on the horizon. But, at a campaign stop last week called “Drinking Liberally, held at the Montlake Ale House in Seattle, Ms Gregoire denied that the state is facing a budget deficit.

Answering a question from a blogger who inquired about that supposed deficit, Madam Governor insisted that all was well. “Thirty states are now sitting on a deficit: we are one of the few in surplus. We are the envy of the country.”

Well, if wishes were fishes and all that... But, it’s not as though Dino Rossi is cooking the books with some like-minded Republicans who wish to embarrass the governor in an election year. The prediction of a deficit comes from the Democrat-controlled Senate Ways and Means Committee. While Washington may yet emerge from the current biennium with a small surplus (although that’s unlikely), the Senate Ways and Means Committee predicts a $2.7 billion deficit for the next biennium and a $5.5 billion deficit in the next.

The prediction that this biennium will end with a small surplus will probably have to be revised sharply downward soon as the state was counting on revenues derived from a sizzling real estate market that the state was hoping would stay hot indefinitely. Has anyone heard of the real estate bubble or the subprime lending crisis? Perhaps Governor Gregoire has been too busy campaigning to pick up a newspaper in the last year or so.

Current events have been a common problem with northwest Democrats lately. About three days into Russia’s invasion of the Georgian Republic, Oregon’s Democratic US Senate candidate Jeff Merkley was asked for his opinion on the matter. He seemed quite surprised to learn that a state in the southeastern United States had been invaded and only after some clarification did he realize that it was that other Georgia. While the rest of the world had been watching it on television and reading about it in the newspapers, the invasion was news to him. It’s fitting that Oregon might elect Merkley to serve alongside Ron Wyden who couldn’t find Bosnia on a globe after the US went to war on that country’s behalf.

But, I digress.

If Ms. Gregoire did read newspapers, then she might have picked up the July 20th edition of the Seattle Times, which had a lengthy article detailing the irresponsible spending increases under her leadership. In just four years, the state’s budget has soared by 8 billion dollars as she shoveled money into the pockets of the special interest groups who helped underwrite her 2004 election and whom she’s counting on this year.

In addition, Ms Gregoire turned away revenues that rightly belonged to the state when she signed a pact with Indian gambling interests that excused them from having to share their profits with the state, as tribes elsewhere in the country must. That deal cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, but reaped millions in political contributions to her campaign and the Washington Democratic party.
But, even if the unthinkable occurs and the predicted deficit does appear, she’s already chosen her scapegoats – Dino Rossi and George Bush.

It’s Dino Rossi’s fault because when he was Chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, he and Gregoire’s predecessor, Gary Locke, closed a looming deficit by trimming spending. But, while the handouts were withdrawn the hands were still out when Gregoire took office.

“What I got was past-due bills — bills that were not paid by the previous budget, that came due,” Gregoire complained.

In other words, all those special interest groups who paid for the recounts that eventually put her in office wanted their payback. And they got it. And like the tribes, they’ve shown their gratitude by opening their checkbooks for her.

I’m more than a little curious about that visit to the bar where she had her séance with other flat Earth types who choose to live in worlds of their own creation. I have no doubt that she spends as much time as possible in the fantasy land where the only deficits are those that can be blamed on others. And, I’d like to know what it was that Ms Gregoire was drinking so liberally in that bar. Kool Aid perhaps?