From a KOMO News story, “Fact check: Has Wash. cut budget by $10.5 billion? Hardly”

As the Washington State legislature begins special session Monday, Governor Gregoire is making a pitch for a “temporary” sales tax hike to close our ongoing budget gap, claiming the state has already cut spending by $10.5 Billion since 2008.

According to Fact Check,

“That number is only true if you stretch the interpretation of what a budget cut is.”

In what I label bureaucratic sleight of hand, we read,

“Many of the hundreds of cuts Gregoire and other Democrats have tallied are simply automatic spending increases that didn’t end up happening.”

In all too typical fashion, reductions in scheduled spending increases are labeled “cuts.” Spending still increases, but not by as much as scheduled and Democrats consider that a “spending cut.”

Yet another spending cut problem Washington State sees was covered in the Seattle Times in their article, As state makes cuts, lawsuits are flying

Lawsuits by unions, illegal alien advocates and special interest groups has gotten to the point that House Ways and Means Chairman Ross Hunter, D-Medina says, “What we’re doing in the budget now is like full employment for lawyers.”

Spokesman for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Adam Glickman displayed the entitlement attitude prevalent today with his comment,

“The courts have been used throughout history to advocate for the rights of vulnerable populations, whether it’s civil rights or the rights of people with disabilities. Government can’t take away people’s rights just because they don’t want to raise revenue.”
“So if states don’t want to be sued for violating people’s rights, then they should stop violating people’s rights and instead raise revenue so that they don’t have to do that.”

How will we ever recover from this economic nightmare with so many believing they have a right to other people’s money and Democrats can’t tell a real spending cut?