Overview of House and Senate Democrats’ 2009-11 Budget Proposals

by Jason Mercier, Director, Center for Government Reform
April 2009

Each person’s analysis of the 2009-11 state budget offered by House and Senate Democrats will be influenced by his budget principles. Washington Policy Center’s budget principles are:

1. Budgets should fund only core functions of government,
2. be truly balanced long term, and
3. not result in a projected deficit in the next budget – i.e., the level of state spending should be sustainable within existing revenue

Unfortunately the proposed budgets fail to satisfy each of these principles though they do take a small step towards correcting past unsustainable spending.

Key Findings

• Though a small step toward correcting the unsustainable spending increases from the past few years, the proposed budgets exceed the revenue forecast and rely too heavily on one-time funds.

• Unless lawmakers act next session to enact fundamental government reforms, the 2011-13 budget cycle will be dominated by the same problems as today: a projected budget deficit.

• As noted by the Governor, the true solution to our budget problems is for lawmakers to “reform state government to make it a more nimble and relevant partner in a new state economy.”

• By implementing long overdue reforms the state will finally be able to get off the boom-and-bust budget roller coaster.

Read or download WPC's Overview of House and Senate Democrats’ 2009-11 Budget Proposals (pdf)