House Democrats unveiled a state budget that funds education without shredding the safety net for kids, seniors, the blind, and disabled – and without resorting to accounting tricks or one-time spending.
Education
The budget set the high-water mark for education spending, adding $1.3 billion over predicted spending on public schools. If you compared total education spending to the current budget, the House proposal spends $1.9 billion more than the status quo.
Gov. Jay Inslee proposed putting $1.2 billion more toward education, while Senate Republican budget writers put forth a budget that adds only $760 million to meet our McCleary obligations.
The House proposal also:
- Invests in early learning
- Reduces class sizes in K-3
- Puts more money into high-demand college degrees
- Expands health care and protects the safety net
The House proposal fully embraces the savings and opportunities offered by Obamacare. The budget:
- Offers affordable health coverage to 385,000 more people by expanding Medicaid
- Helps small business with costs by implementing the health care exchange, giving business owners and employees affordable and portable options for health coverage
Tax reform and tax fairness
A citizens’ commission, panel of experts, and the House Finance Committee all examined the massive number of tax breaks, exemptions, and loopholes. Hundreds of breaks and loopholes costs the taxpayers $24 billion, compared to the entire two-year state budget proposal of $34 billion.
Many of these breaks have been on the books since the 1930s. Do they still make sense? Do they actually create jobs?
The House proposes a series of reforms to shift tax dollars from loopholes that don’t create jobs to funding education, which we know is the foundation of our modern economy.
The $1.3 billion in loopholes and revenue match up with the $1.3 billion invested in new education spending aimed at meeting our constitutional duty under the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision.
To find out more about the our budget proposal, click here.