Gov. Jay Inslee wants more money for schools, mental-health treatment, state worker salaries and more in a two-year budget that would spend 15 percent more than the last one.
He wants to finance it mainly with a tax on high income from capital gains and a charge on large emitters of greenhouse gases — two years after he ran for governor on a no-new-taxes pledge.
“I have hoped to avoid this route. I have tried to avoid this route. But we now have an obligation to our children,” he said of his reversal, adding that he had tried to raise revenue by closing tax exemptions but the Legislature has failed to “muster the gusto” to close about $500 million worth of loopholes the past two years.Then there is the little problem that Bill Gates II (pere) failed, in 2010, to pass an initiative that would have instituted an income tax on high earning Washingtonians. An ex-football player, Gov. Inslee must appreciate the end-run made around that failure this fall, by first getting voters to support an initiative calling for downsizing class sizes in public schools...without saying how the state would come up with the funds to hire more teachers to enable it.
Spend first, tax later! Those devils made him do it.
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