Let’s balance the budget while creating jobs

We don’t really have a state budget problem — we have a jobs problem.

When the economy was good, the budget was fine. So the question is this: How can we balance the budget while creating jobs?

That’s the problem House Democrats are looking to solve.

Focusing on cuts vs. creating jobs

Budget cuts don’t create jobs, or fix your economy.

If budget cuts created jobs, our state economy would be booming, since we cut $10 billion in spending.

Cuts are job killers, because state troopers, prison guards and teachers go to the unemployment line.

Economist Paul Krugman rightly pointed out that states are wrong to cut jobs when the economy is weak. It only hurts you in the long run.

What we need are long-term solutions. I agree with the title of House Republican leader Richard DeBolt’s op-ed, “Job Growth Key to Budget Solution.”

The question is how to create jobs while balancing the budget.

A balanced, creative approach

As two conservative Democratic lawmakers pointed out on this page two weeks ago, there needs to be a balance between cuts and new revenue.

The state budget has already been slashed by $10 billion, taking us far beyond “lean and mean” to “bone and blood.”

Teachers are getting laid off. The governor is now proposing unthinkable cuts, including eliminating health care for working people and cutting supervision for violent criminals.

Clearly, we’re happy to embrace reforms to do things better, faster and cheaper. Many such reforms are already in place, and we’ll find more. Yet the easy cuts have already been made, and we’re already spending less, per citizen, than we did in 1987.

There’s no secret source of fat to trim that will balance our budget. All cuts will be more and more painful — for our schools and universities, for prisons and health care.

Washington state’s workers and businesses didn’t create this global recession. We didn’t cause the problem. So it’s wrong to cast the blame on our state and think that we were doing something wrong. This is a great place to live, work and raise a family — and it always will be.

Our goal has to be to protect our seed corn — our schools and seniors, our kids and institutions — during these tough times. Because times will get better. They’re already getting better.

That’s why I support a balanced approach to balancing the budget, and surveys show that citizens want balance, too.

It all starts with jobs

Jobs are more than numbers. Every new budget cut means a teacher or state trooper has to go home and tell his family they may be losing the house and possibly moving back with Grandma and Grandpa.

And every new job means a family can pay the mortgage that month, keep their home and maybe save up for the future. A job means hope. Can you afford to repair the 10-year-old Civic if the transmission blows out? Will your daughter be able to go to college, or is the price of tuition simply too high?

When I was knocking on doors during last year’s election campaign, every cul-de-sac had an empty house and other people, who were still in their homes, often told me they were just waiting for the call from the bank, waiting to be evicted because the banks had played casino with the economy and they were the losers.

Even those folks who have jobs and are mowing the lawns of empty, foreclosed houses in the cul-de-sac to prevent crime and keep property values up are concerned. They might be next.

Jobs also mean small business owners have customers coming in the doors. When I talk to small business owners, they say they need customers, customers and customers. Tax breaks do nothing when you’re not making money.

Cutting environmental protection or worker protection doesn’t bring customers in the door.

Jobs Now, Washington’s Future

That’s why a strong coalition of businesses and workers are coming together to work on a plan to create jobs — right now — while building a better Washington.

These will be private-sector jobs in every corner of the state, with an emphasis on hiring unemployed veterans, construction workers and young people — those hardest hit by the recession — to fix our schools, work in our forests and build projects that will benefit our state for generations.

Also, building new colleges — like the Gray Wolf Building going up at Everett Community College — helps give our state a brainpower edge. Fixing up state hatcheries puts fish in our rivers and brings people to Monroe to buy steelhead gear.

We will join this coalition in their work because jobs are our priority.

And we will ask you, the voters, to join in this effort. Then-Gov. Dan Evans did this in 1972, after the last great Boeing Bust.

He called his plan Jobs Now, Washington’s Future and voters approved more than $2 billion in today’s dollars to fund the work.

Franklin Roosevelt led a similar effort to combat the Great Depression in the 1930s. Not only did people go back to work, they built parks, schools and structures like the Grand Coulee Dam that provided the infrastructure and electricity that powered our state’s economic recovery — and still work today.

We are at a similar point in history. We must be a courageous and bold.

Getting out of a recession or a Depression takes creativity and courage.

You’ve got to be creative, because the normal way of doing things won’t work, and you’ve got to be courageous because people are afraid to change their habits.

Ralph Munro, our former secretary of state, is a Republican who worked for Gov. Evans back then. I was there when he read letters that Gov. Evans got from around the state, letters written by people happy to have jobs again so they could support their family.

FDR was a Democrat and Evans was a Republican — and they did the same thing. Because it’s smart. Because it’s not voodoo economics. When people are out of work, the best solution is to put them to work. Not theoretically — in reality. Right away.

Connecticut just launched a similar jobs program. It passed with a single no vote in the House and Senate because they understood that when times are bad, you put aside party politics for the sake of your state and your country.

Evans told the truth. He said Jobs Now, Washington’s Future was “the most important program I have proposed in my seven years as governor.”

Evans put people back to work and got Washington state back on its feet.

We can do it, too.

It’s time to create jobs in every corner of our state, from Bellingham to Longview to Walla Walla and Spokane.

Construction workers in our state face a 30 percent unemployment rate. Post-9/11 veterans are at 12 percent unemployment.

Let’s get construction workers and jobless veterans back on the job, building a better Washington for our kids and grandkids.

Let’s boost local businesses by having people with new jobs spending their money at the Ace Hardware down the street and the flower shop downtown.

When more people have jobs again, they can move from that tiny apartment — or the guest room back home with Mom and Dad — into a real house with a yard for the dog and room for the kids to play.

So in the short term, we must balance the budget, but we can’t let that immediate problem make us forget that our biggest challenge, and opportunity, is to create jobs.

Let’s do the right thing and remember what Dan Evans and FDR did to bring Washington state — and America — back on our feet: create real jobs, right away, in every corner of this fine state.

About the author

Rep. Hans Dunshee (D-Snohomish) is a former small business owner and volunteer firefighter. He is chair of the Capital Budget Committee, which controls the state’s construction budget.

More ideas

The Legislature is scheduled to convene Nov. 28 in a special session to rebalance the budget in the face of falling revenue. Previous commentaries on approaches to the budget, one by centrist Democrats and one by the Senate Republican budget leader, are archived at www.heraldnet.com/opinion.