Proposal hurts middle-class public employees
I don’t agree with the values in the McKenna, Reed, Hewitt and Debolt commentary [“Produce a budget that reflects our values,” Opinion, Jan. 6].
The authors suggest cutting public employees’ salaries and health benefits to balance the budget. But most public employees are middle-class wage earners. Why always balance the budget at the expense of the middle class?
The authors want to privatize the sale of liquor and workman’s compensation insurance so big companies can reap huge profits from something that should be serving the interest of the public. The mantras of “choice” and “competition” sound good, but in the end they just raise the price for the public and enrich the fat cats.
Not once do the authors mention that people earning in excess of $250,000 in net annual income get a free ride in Washington state. Washington is one of the few states in the union without an income tax or substantial mining or oil revenues, so people with high incomes in Washington ride for free. Protecting this free ride for the rich is the hidden “value” that the authors of this commentary don’t want to talk about.
The authors’ budget-balancing “values” are all about sending profits to businesses, letting the rich get off tax free, and making cuts that hurt the middle class and the poor.
— Isabel D’Ambrosia, Seattle
Solution is not consistent with shared values
The state Republican delegation’s “solutions” for balancing the state budget — touted as “protecting Washington’s values” — borders on the ridiculous. Is it consistent with our shared values to allow every neighborhood mom-and-pop store to sell liquor 24/7? The public-safety issues created would quickly outweigh the additional revenue.
As a K-12 teacher (one of those state employees they refer to), I do not welcome forced pay cuts and increases to my medical costs as a solution to the state budget crisis. Nor do I think that injured workers who rely on workman’s compensation should bear an additional burden, as the Republican leadership suggests. No employment group should be singled out to shoulder this fiscal crisis under political pressure to “save their jobs.”
The most equitable way to solve this problem is to spread the pain, i.e., the cost of maintaining state services, as widely as possible. As an alternative, something like a temporary state surtax on above-poverty-level wage-earning households could work. No one would lose their job, medical services, fire and police protection, state parks and recreation areas, or teachers and programs in their local schools.
If selling more liquor, reducing compensation for injured workers, and reducing public employees salaries and benefits are the best and brightest solutions the Republicans have in this crisis, they deserve to be the minority party in the Legislature.
— Ann Grahn-Morgan, Everett