Governor Gregoire Disappointed Voters Didn’t “Help Us Out”

November 8, 2010

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The arrogance of this woman seems boundless. As the video here shows, at a time of deep economic recession with unemployment remaining excessively high and people unable to afford many basic necessities, she whines to KING 5 TV, “I wish voters had helped us out.”

What disappoints her is that we in Washington State once again stood up and said “enough! Stop the tax increases.” We rejected the recent taxes placed on candy and soda, reinstated the voter mandated 2/3 majority vote in the legislature for tax increases, that the Democrats led legislature so easily did away with this past year and we rejected their ‘foot in the door’ income tax on high wage earners, knowing full well that eventually it will be passed down to all of us while sales taxes, property taxes and other taxes will remain high or even raised as time goes by.

California’s several efforts at balancing their budget on the backs of taxpayers, while handing out lucrative entitlements has that state on the brink of bankruptcy, with businesses and taxpayers leaving every day. As seen in a November 4, 2010 Investor’s Business Daily article, The ‘Golden State’ Still Doesn’t Get It,

“From 2001 to 2010, factory jobs plummeted from 1.87 million to 1.23 million — a loss of 34% of the state’s industrial base.”

“With just 12% of the U.S. population, California has almost a third of the nation’s welfare recipients.”

“The state’s sales tax is the nation’s highest, and its income tax the third-highest, the BusinessInsider.com Web site recently noted.”

And on and on it goes. California gives Washington State example after example of how not to do it and Governor Gregoire and the Democrat led legislature continues to ignore the plight of our southern neighbor as they attempt to copy them.

We have been told every year since the recession began, shortly after Democrats seized total control of congress in 2007 that we are seeing “all-cuts’ budgets, yet spending has increased every year since she moved into the governor’s mansion. A reduction in expected increases in spending is how Democrats define “cuts.”

Facing multi-Billion dollar budget deficits, Democrats set-up Washington State for approving an income tax based solely on class envy. They did this by proposing only the top wage earners would have to pay and after jacking up sales taxes last year, included a promise of lowering them a slight amount.

Voters overwhelmingly rejected the injection of even more class envy in the state. As a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed put it, Washingtonians Get It.

Senator Don Benton, 17th legislative district said in March,

“There was no real reform enacted last year or in 2010. Because of this, we will have to deal with an $8 billion bow wave of costs in the 2011-13 biennium. Even when revenue growth returns to normal, the state budget will not be able to fund anywhere near the promises made by the majority Democrats in 2009-10.”

Governor Gregoire now calls for “bi-partisan solutions” to the ever increasing budget deficit, not acknowledging once that the Republican minority have proposed 55 Solutions that were all ignored or rejected by both governor Gregoire and the Democrat majority.

An October 25, 2010 op-ed appearing in the Snohomish Times, What An Income Tax Did to Connecticut apparently caught voting taxpayers attention, but must have been missed by our governor as she now says of the failed income tax measure, “if not that, then what?” She adds, “I don’t have a path forward to be honest with you.”

How about actual cuts in spending, governor Gregoire, not more of your reductions in proposed spending increases? How about looking at that “70% of the budget” that you say is “protected?”

Almost half of that 70% goes to public education. How much of it goes to bloated salaries for unneeded administrative positions, public union contracts and benefits and other spending that doesn’t actually reach the kids? What concessions do state union employees make to share in the downturn?

We cannot forget that in 2008 we saw our State schools lose a $13.2 million math and science grant over union laws. And yet, they continue to turn to taxpayers demanding more every year?

And now the governor has the audacity to stand up and say, “I wish the voters had helped us out?” Little wonder the Libertarian CATO Institute rated governor Gregoire as “an ‘F’ because she is one of the worst governors in the country when it comes to tax and spending increases,” according to a post by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

When governor Gregoire assumed power in 2004 Washington State was running surpluses in the Billions of dollars. In her first 4 years state spending increased some $8 Billion and now, governor Gregoire can stand before us and say, “I don’t have a path forward.”

Yes, governor Gregoire, the “path forward” would be for you and your tax and spend Democrat cronies to resign and allow us to select replacements that know how to run a state, not just continue handing out what we don’t have and expecting more.

Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com