Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Time For A Reality Check Christine

I was shocked to see Governor Christine Gregoire flat out state on KING 5's Up Front program, that not only does the state not have a budget deficit, but that it actually has a surplus of $800 million. What's more, she said it with a completely straight face!

Never mind the fact challenger Dino Rossi has been warning us for well over a year that we will be drowning in red ink by election day in November, predicting a deficit of around $2.5 billion, Gregoire’s own Office of Financial Management (OFM) now has the number pegged at about $2.7 billion — and growing.

There is an $800 million dollar Rainy Day Fund, that Gregoire insisted the legislature squirrel away — over the strenuous objections of both the special interests funding her re-election campaign, and legislators on the type of spending binge usually attributed to drunken sailors. But still, that’s a far cry from any kind of a surplus. No wonder Gregoire delayed the math portion of the WASL. Obviously she doesn’t understand math any better than those high school kids.

So here it is Governor…

$2.7 billion minus $800 million equals $1.9 billion. That means if we allocated the entire Rainy Day Fund to reducing the deficit, we’d still be $1.9 billion in the hole.

To their credit, moderators KING 5 news anchor Lori Matsukawa, and Seattle Times political columnist David Postman attempted to force Gregoire to address the budget in a truthful manner, but the Governor completely ignored their questions, rudely talking right over them and launching into a vitriolic attack on Rossi, that mirrored the blatant lies being told in her TV commercials.

I don’t know if Gregoire is trying to pass off the “Big Lie” about the deficit hoping against hope that the voters are really that stupid, or if she’s completely out of touch with reality. Either way, the bottom line is that we have a serious spending problem on our hands that neither ignoring it — nor lying about it to voters — is going to solve

1 comment:

  1. Well said! She needs to know that spinning the number won't fool the voters.

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