And Gregoire’s Just A Victim – Of Her Own Reckless Overspending

Bellevue, WA – Christine Gregoire today topped her own state record when the state’s economic forecasters revised their budget projections to reveal a deficit of more than $5 billion dollars. This is now the largest dollar deficit in the 119-year history of the State of Washington and all of it created during Gov. Gregoire’s first term in office.

Gov. Gregoire’s cynical attempt to blame all of the deficit on the national economic downturn flies in the face of the fact that the deficit had already reached $3.2 billion before the financial market collapse of late September ushered in a recession that still has the country reeling.

As usual the governor takes no responsibility for her reckless spending, despite knowing that she increased state spending by more than twice the rate of state revenue growth. State spending has increased $8 billion dollars since her election in 2004, well in excess of the state’s rate of revenue growth.

What’s even more startling, Governor Gregoire said today, “We anticipated this decrease and we are better prepared to weather this storm.” This is easy for her to say now since her re-election, but she had previously refused to comment or even speculate on the size of the deficit during the campaign. In fact, Gov. Gregoire went so far as denying the existence of the deficit until late in the campaign.

In response to the startling new deficit forecast, Washington State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser issued the following statement:

“Christine Gregoire’s continuing pattern of denying responsibility for any part of the record deficit that she largely created is bizarre at best” Esser said. “With all of the promises of new initiatives and no cuts for “vital” programs she made during the campaign for re-election, one can’t help but wonder how she will possibly be able to comply with the state’s constitutional requirement for a balanced budget. Gregoire’s campaign vow of no tax hikes will be put to the test and I hope she sticks to it this time. It’s only a few short weeks before the governor will have to release her proposed balanced budget for the next biennium and we will found out then how sincere she was.”