Our local Dead Tree Daily editorialists support spending billions on things like food stamps, an opinion with which I wholeheartedly agree, but they consistently inveigh against any tax hike intended to pay for vital social programs. Instead the Blethenites regularly advise lawmakers to balance their budgets on the backs of the public employee unions.

Which I suppose might help explain why here in Washington we have state employees who qualify for food stamps while working in the same DSHS division that administers them.

[Ed Tilton] says every raise he’s ever gotten has been eaten up by rising healthcare costs. Tilton has a mortgage, a wife, two kids. And get this.

Ed Tilton: “I make so little I qualify for basic food benefits and I work for the department. There’s something wrong with that.”

No doubt when they endorse Rob McKenna for governor and Mitt Romney for president, the editors will laud the former for his willingness to rein in the outrageous benefits enjoyed by state workers, while suggesting the latter is the man to cut the deficits President Obama accumulated funding things like giving food stamps to state workers.