As Brendan noted earlier, Republicans sure do love Governor Christine Gregoire's budget. Why? Because it does exactly what Dino Rossi would have done if he'd defeated Gregoire in November. Instead of raising taxes or eliminating tax loopholes for businesses, Gregoire's budget slashes funding for public safety (reducing supervision for felons and misdemeanants), human services (cutting assistance to 21,000 people, including a program that helps people who are temporarily unable to work because of disabilities), parks (closing 13 state parks and fish hatcheries), voter-approved initiatives (suspending teacher pay raises and an initiative to reduce class sizes), health care (cutting spending on health care program for the poorest state residents by 42 percent, suspending a proposed expansion of children's health care and ending a vaccination program for poor children), and education.

Democrats who supported Gregoire because of her campaign pledges to preserve children's health care, services for the most vulnerable, and teacher pay are right to be infuriated. Throughout her campaign, Gregoire insisted that the difference between her and Rossi was one of "values." Gregoire vowed that she, unlike Rossi, would take care of the state's most vulnerable citizens.

For example:

In a late-September gubernatorial debate,

[Gregoire] used just about every question to attack Rossi for being “out of step with Washington values” by pointing to the 2003 budget which Rossi wrote as a state senator—cutting 40,000 kids off health care and raising fees on seniors in nursing homes. She got off her best line of the night by sticking to this theme of Rossi’s indifference to vulnerable Washingtonians when she noted that Rossi’s 2003 budget stepped on a voter-approved initiative for smaller class sizes. Rossi balanced the budget, she said, “by taking it out on the hides of our kids…That’s just not our values.”

On KUOW in mid-September, Gregoire told reporter Austin Jenkins:

The voters had spoken loud and clear, for example, that they wanted us to invest in reducing class size and pay the teachers because we were among the worst in the country and that's an example of the people's values that I was trying to put in place in the budget.

On an anti-Rossi web site, Gregoire castigated Rossi for his record in the state senate, alleging Rossi

kicked kids off of healthcare and put them into crowded classrooms. He cut funding to reduce class size and cut funding for increasing teacher pay.

There is never a good time to shortchange our investments in education or in healthcare coverage for our children, but that is exactly what Dino Rossi did as chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

We can’t trust Dino Rossi to prioritize education or healthcare for our children.

And from Gov. Gregoire's own official government web site:

Governor Gregoire believes that all children should have access to health care — no child should go without. She has promised that all of Washington’s children will be insured by 2010, and she’s taking great strides to reach that goal. During her first week in office, she signed a directive to prevent 26,000 children from losing their health care coverage. The number of additional insured children continues to climb, despite little help from the federal government. Since Governor Gregoire took office, 84,000 more children in Washington now have access to health insurance.

Students today benefit from smaller class sizes and experienced teachers who received a well-earned cost of living increase, thanks to Governor Gregoire’s commitment to fully fund two initiatives overwhelmingly passed by the voters.

Now that Gregoire has abandoned htose commitments, does she still represent "Washington's values"?

Perhaps even more incredible than Gregoire's own hypocrisy is the short memories of Olympia reporters. Of the major daily papers in the state, not one noted Gregoire's campaign pledge—made as recently as six weeks ago, when it was clear the state was headed for an economic downturn—to preserve the very programs she cut this week. For example, the Seattle Times' story, by reporter Andrew Garber, notes that Gregoire's budget would "slash more than $3.5 billion in funding for public schools, social services and other areas to help close the biggest budget shortfall in state history," but fails to mention that those are exactly the cuts Gregoire promised she would never. Similarly, the P-I's story
on Gregoire's "frugal" proposal, by reporter Chris McCann, includes plenty of self-flagellation by Gregoire ("I hate it. ... I've told people whom I respect and admire and who have folks that are going to be dramatically affected by this budget, 'You're going to hate it.'") but doesn't mention the fact that Gregoire's budget does exactly what she blasted her Republican opponent for on the campaign trail. Finally, Associated Press reporter Curt Woodward actually writes that Gregoire's budget "stick[s] to her campaign pledge" not to increase taxes—without noting the many campaign pledges Gregoire broke to stick to that one.

It's too bad newspapers are actually cutting back on reporters at the legislature. With the state in its biggest budget crisis in decades, this is one time when we could use a few good people in Olympia.