Supreme Court: Washington Underfunds Public Schools

Hold on to your pocketbooks. Governor Gregoire and the Democrats continue to cut education instead of arts funding, environmental causes, and many other budget items, in the hopes that citizens will want to raise taxes to pay for education.

See, no sane person would want to raise taxes to pay for art at a halfway house for child molesters, so the Democrats have conducted a strategy of cutting the most popular programs first, in the hopes that popular support will swing toward increasing taxes. So far, it hasn't worked, but now that the Supreme Court of Washington has ruled that public education is underfunded, that may change.

Resist. Demand cuts in other programs. Demand that education be cut last. And if your local politicians tell you we need to raise taxes for education, call them out on their lies.

Now, granted, I think any decision that says schools are underfunded is completely wrong. It's a given that better education can always be provided without an increase in funds. I am completely unconvinced that education is actually underfunded, though I would agree that the students aren't getting a sufficient education. But this is beside the point, which is that if more money is needed, we already have that money, in all of the other places where it is being spent that are not the state's paramount constitutional duty.

And while you're at it, demand that our state return to priorities-based budgeting. Every item gets a priority, and we spend revenues on the top priorities first, and when we run out of money, we stop. We don't cut top priorities. We don't fight over what to cut during a recession. We only fight over what the state's priorities are, and then they are laid out for all the voters to see. This is how families budget, this is how businesses budget, and this is how our state should budget.