"Punting" or addressing the State's Problems and Thinking Ahead

The 2008 legislature took a lot of abuse for addressing a lot of problems the state was facing but not solving all of them at once. For example, the Olympian condemned the legislature for implementing a paid family leave system but not coming up with the funding source during the 2008 session. The Tacoma News Tribune complained that the legislature failed when it created the mechanism for the Working Families Tax Credit but didn't immediately find a funding source.

Education interest groups grumbled that the legislature failed when it addressed all day kindergarten, math and science teaching but did not reformulate our education finance system in 2007 and left the major funding formula for the 09 legislature. Others protested the legislature punted when it passed legislation expanding health care to nearly all children without taking on the bigger issue of health care reform.

While most of this rhetoric came from the loyal Republican opposition it was widely parroted in the press.

Their argument is troubling and is the mirror opposite of the expectations of interest groups that I blogged on yesterday.

Many interest groups believe that the legislature should just get with it and fully fund all of the major problems that our society confronts. Of course, what they really mean is the particular problem that involves their interest. But nonetheless, they think that if we are short of change within the current revenue system we should raise taxes and pass the bill to the taxpayers.

The Republican argument and that of their media parrots, is that we shouldn't even address or confront problems if we aren't willing to just solve them right now. But of course we can't because we don't have the money so don't mention it.

A more promising approach is for the Governor and the Legislature to systematically identify the major challenges and problems the state is facing and develop a long term plan towards making progress in tackling those problems.

That would mean of course that you would take it one step at a time. No, it is not punting to have a second or even third step in your plan. Nor is it failing when you don't get the final step at the very beginning.

Let's take paid family leave. The first question is, is this a real problem or not? If this something we want to do? The answer is not, it's an ok idea but we can't afford it. If it is a good idea and a priority we have to figure out a way to get there.

During the 2007 legislative session, the legislature took the first step and passed a bill creating a program and then set up a process to determine how it would be administered and funded before the 2008 session. During the 2008 session, the legislature took the second step and agreed on the administrative approach and provided short term funding for the creation of the program. Since it would take two years to get the program up and running, the legislature decided to wait on the third and final step of ongoing funding till the 2009 session.

We don’t have the capacity to solve every problem at once. But we need a plan to get there. I would call this a thoughtful and deliberative process.

The Year of High Expectations

The 2009 legislative session is likely to become a year of high expectations. Expectations that cannot possibly be met even during good economic times.

After years of budget cuts, high drop out rates and sub marginal academic achievement, education leaders and interests believe it is time to meet our state's paramount duty and fully fund education. A Task Force has been meeting over the past few months and is expected to make recommendations on education funding in December. Several members of the task force believe that the increased cost of a competitive education system could be in the range of $4 to $7 billion.

Fewer and fewer businesses are paying health care benefits to their employees and the benefits provided are shrinking. Health care costs are rising much faster than inflation and the ranks of the uninsured continue to spike upward. A Health Care Reform Task Force is meeting over the summer and fall and has hired an insurance actuarial firm to come up with 5 feasible options for reform. Most major proposals ranging from medical savings accounts, to the Romney Massachusetts sytem and the Canadian Single Payer System are likely to reduce overall medical costs but increase the costs paid out by government.

Puget Sound is dying. Some areas of the Sound are so polluted that water temperature has risen to the point where wildlife of any sort are unable to live. Kelp beds are disappearing, fishing is the on the decline and the quantity of pollutants in the water exceeds healthy levels. The Puget Sound Partnership is working with business and government to try to find ways to clean up the Sound. And the clean-up is likely to cost money.

While state and federal law requires that employers off leave for employees to care for newborns or elderly or dying parents, few people cannot afford to take the time off. During the 2007 legislative session, the Washington State Legislature passed a family leave insurance bill that would allow for families to be able to afford to take the leave. However, the state House was unable to pass a funding source for program and the legislature is expected to find a funding source during the 2009 session.

Washington's tax system is the most regressive in the country. Not only do middle and low income families pay two or three times the percentage of their income in taxes than the rich, but they actually pay a higher real sales tax rate. State and local sales taxes ad up to about 8.3% depending on where you live. If you make enough money or have enough deductions to itemize your deductions, you can lower your effective tax rate to 5.5%. Those who cannot deduct pay the full 8.3. In 2008, the legislature passed the Working Families Tax Credit which is designed to equalize the tax burden a bit. The Credit will only be implemented when there are revenues available.

The current economic forecast indicates that we could actually face budget cuts for the next biennial budget. Cuts that could hit children, the poor and the elderly. Add to that equation the need to improve our education system, reform health care, clean-up the environment, equalize the tax base and allow families time to take care of newborns and sick parents.

The way out is likely to be establishing goals and then developing a flight plan to reach them. For instance, identify the class size; tutors, mentors and compensation system you need to succeed in education and then phase those improvements in over 10 years. This approach could be the strategy for adressing many of the problems described above.

But interest groups need to be patient and understand the needs of others. Teachers might want a pay hike, but a working mother might want time off to take care of a new born baby. Health care costs might be soaring but Puget Sound might be reaching a tipping point.

It is good policy to identify the key problems we are facing and make steady progress to solve them. But we must be both patient and focused.

Tim Eyman and the Permanent Campaign

Last week a group of legislative staff called the Democratic Study Group held a showing of the pro-Tim Eyman film, "The Battles of Tim Eyman". One of the questions that came up in the discussion that followed was why has Tim been successful? Could someone from the left side of the spectrum succeed in either stopping Tim's attacks on government programs or create an offense towards a more progressive agenda?

My answer at that time is that it was simply a matter of organization. Tim and a few friends were successful because they spent the time to put an organization and raise the money to allow it to succeed.

My good frend Denny Heck disagreed. He argued that Eyman simply has a better issue than Democrats can come up with. Who can be against tax cuts?

After a little thought I'll have to admit he's right.

A Democratic alternative to Eyman's tax cuts could be progressive tax cuts that would allow our extremely regressive tax structure to be more fairly distributed along the income scale. By making the property tax more progressive, working families could get a real tax cut, not the chump change Eyman has tried to deliver.

But there's only one problem. Who would fund the initiaitve? Who would pay to cut taxes on the middle class and redistribute the burden to those who are paying less than their fair share? It certainly wouldn't be the people with money. On the opposite side of the equation who would oppose a progressive distribution of property taxes? Those people who have a lot of money that's who. And they could mount one heck of a campaign against it.

Eymans' tax cuts may benefit the rich more than middle class but at least he delivers something. Yes, it might result in cuts to fire service or delays in ferry traffic but we can just blame that on government waste.

Make Big Oil Pay

Hillary Clinton's proposal to defer federal gas taxes this summer and replace lost revenues with a windfall profits tax is good politics and good policy. It is good politics because it gives working families a tax break and it is good policy because it replaces the lost revenue with a viable and appropriate source of revenue. When oil prices rise from $50 a barrel to $120 a barrel, the cost of producing the oil does not. Today's oil still costs from $2 to $25 a barrel to produce. The difference is almost all profit, as witnessed by the huge corporate profit reports of the nation's oil companies.

Oil companies argue that those profits (and high prices) will allow them to invest in new sources of oil and increase supply which in the long run would cut prices. First of all, as Keynes said, we are all dead in the long run. But more importantly, we actually don't want them to invest their profits in mining oil sands in Alberta or drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.

We want them to invest in alternative energy that reduces global warming and creates cleaner air. The best approach would be to implement a windfall profits tax and invest most of the income in alternative energy and use some of the revenues to offset the impact of high prices on working families.

Hooray Hillary. Pay attention Barak!

Iraq War Budget - Blame the Victim

According to AP, A new war spending bill proposed by House Democrats would prohibit using U.S. aid to rebuild towns or equip security forces in Iraq unless Baghdad matches every dollar spent. The bill also includes a mandate that the president negotiate an agreement with Baghdad to subsidize the U.S. military's fuel costs so troops operating in Iraq aren't paying any more than Iraqi citizens are.

Here we go again, attack Iraq and then make them pay for it. Clearly, House Democrats are right to blame Bush, McCain and the Republicans and Congress for this devesating and endless war. But making the Iraqis pay for our mistake is a cheap way to try and weasel out of taking responsibility for our own actions. This is nothing short of the nastiest sort of political pandering.

Is Jermiah Wright The New Ralph Nader?

Despite being one of the greatest populist crusaders of 1970s and 80s, Ralph Nader will go down in history as a person whose ego was so big and self importance so dominating that he cost nobel peace prize winner Al Gore the election and elected George W. Bush President.

Barak Obama pastor Jermiah Wright is looming as the next Nader. Oblivious to the possibility that Barak Obama could actually be elected President and begin to undo some of Bush's damage, Wright has set out to prove that's what's important is to have the last word. NBC political director Chuck Todd summed up Wright's comments, "You're so vain, I bet you thought this campaign was about you".

We'll be the last to die for our mistakes

Bruce Springsteen's song, "Last to Die", tells a lot about warfare waged from a high technology superpower who risks less than those who it attacks.

Whether our invasion of Iraq and the destruction of its infrastructure, it's economy and nearly a million of its people was caused by stupidity, vanity or imperialist aspirations, the fact of that matter is we are responsible for it.

What is the most hypocritical and aggravating is that Democrats, opposed to the war, somehow believe that we can get out of paying the cost of our mistake. Pandering to an electorate who seems to care little about Iraquis but are concerned about our own troops and the federal budget, Democrats believe that they can pass the costs on to the Iraquis who infrastructure and economy we destroyed. We don't need to pay for any of this and we shouldn't have to risk American lives here. It isn't our problem!

The hypocrisy here is that is we created Iraqi government. In the old days, it would have been referred to as a puppet government. This would be a little bit like the old ventriloquist trick of blaming the dummy.

Governor Mike Huckabee probably put it best, "We broke it. We own it."

Now that doesn't mean we continue our current strategy of blow everyone up till they submit strategy. It could mean that we create alliances in the Arab World or attempt to build a multilateral or UN approach, or even a Sen. Biden division of Iraq into three zones.

But it does mean that we have to patiently try to figure this out and perhaps most importantly we have to pay for it.

We can't blame someone else. We can't say we can't afford it.

Obama for President

As I've blogged previously, Obama faces challenges in his race for the presidency. As an African-American and a Harvard attorney whose political base to a large extent consists of social liberals who are "winners" in the global economy, he may struggle with white working class voters. Both his race and his base, in totally different ways, could make it difficulty for him to convince these voters that he understands their way of life.

On the other hand, his inspiring story and his message is not only believable but could offer to hope to all Americans who are fed up with the ways things have been going in recent years. Friday's Washington Post/ABC news poll indicated that 90% of all Americans thought we were on the wrong track - the highest percentage yet recorded.

Perhaps most importantly, electing Obama would change the world. We have earned the enmity of most of the world by invading Iraq destroying their infrastructure, and killing nearly one million of their people. We have signaled to Arabs and Palestinians throughout the mid-east that we have no interest or concern with the plight of Palestinians and our erratic sable rattling at Iran leaves most of the world questioning our mental stability.

The New York Times recently displayed a map that traced the age demographics and unemployment rates of Muslim countries. The map showed that millions of young men and women are growing up in countries without jobs. Historically, this is a condition where people are looking for someone to blame. And guess who is available? Recent polls show that a plurality of young Muslim men believe it is ok to kill Americans.

Electing Barak Hussein Obama would send a message to the world that Americans are not the root of all evil. We could revive what was great about America, that a bright, hard-working young American with an African father and a Muslim middle name can become President.

While, Hillary Clinton could over time restore our credibility in the world and perhaps reduce the hatred we have come to engender. But with Obama the symbolism would be enormous.

Rednecks, Racists and Liberals

Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris used to bristle when Easterners would snidely use the word redneck to refer to Fred's constituents. Fred would snap back that "their necks are red because they work under the hot sun all day". Harris respected and ably served the hardworking farmers, cattle hands and oil workers in Oklahoma. But Harris was no racist. He was a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission who argued tenaciously that race not class was the root cause of the plight of minorities in the U.S. and his Comanche wife was a leader in the Native American Community.

Harris was one of the few American populists in the past fifty years who understood the complex relationship between the white working class and people of color in America. He and other populist Democrats worked to bridge the divide by emphasizing populist economic issues and economic and civil rights for people of color. For Harris the "issue was privilege". The privilege of the rich and the powerful to exploit the wages of workers and the lands of farmers. Ultimately, they lost the fight.

On the other hand, racists like George Wallace used right-wing racists populism to divide the white working class and minorities. They blamed the "liberal elite" for bestowing privileges of affirmative action and welfare at the expense of the little people - the white working class.

Wallace's message spread like wild fire winning him primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin in the 1972 elections. Nixon aid and speech-writer, Kevin Phillips quickly picked up on the strategy and effectively used it to defend the "silent majority" against the rich liberal elites.

To the extent that the Wallace strategy created the solid Southern political base for the Republican party in the South and with working class whites in the North. Democrats appeared to be paying more attention to the issues of the poor and people of color and less on universal economic issues impacting the poor and middle class.

Over time, Democrats begin to move to the right on economic issues, and to the left on social issues thus creating a new political base including social liberals and economic conservatives.

This is the skeleton of the economic landscape we see today.

Obama's Bitter Fruit

"I don't shop at Wal-Mart" was a bumper sticker I recently saw planted on a new Mercedes Benz convertible. The irony was clearly lost on the owner who no doubt would still be shopping at Nordstrom's and Saks even if Wal-Mart was union and paid health care benefits.

Liberal elitism has long been the staple of Republican campaign machines. It all started with economic populist Kevin Phillip's 1972 Southern Strategy (The Emerging Republican Majority). Phillips propelled Richard Nixon to the White House by taking a page out of the Wallace campaign book and attacking liberals as elites who were out of touch with needs of working class Americans.

From John Edward's $300 haircut to John Kerry's seven multi-million dollar summer homes, Republicans continue to score points. Never had they had it served up to them so easily with Democratic front runner Barak Obama.

Barak Obama explained to a group of affluent supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser that small town working class Americans, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like them or anti-immigration or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration".

Is Obama and elitist? Well he certainly doesn't come from an "elite" background. Obama's father abandoned the family when Obama was 2; he was raised by a single mother who, at times, struggled financially; he worked his way through law school; he became a community organizer in a tough Chicago neighborhood.

The label has never stuck with George W. Bush on the other hand. George, raised in New England and the scion of a New England elite family that goes from U.S. Senator grandfather to his father the president and members of Yale's elite and secretive Skull and Crossbones fraternity. But his folksy acquired Texas accent and glib style has shook the label.

However, exit polls from Democratic primaries indicate that the liberal elite is a big part of the audience that Obama has been playing to and winning primaries with. (he has also done well with young people and African-Americans). He has attracted a new legion of affluent supporters who are socially liberal, well educated and benefitting mightily from changes brought by the global economy. (did I say this speech was at a San Francisco fundraiser?)

Unfortunately, according to John Judis and Ruy Teixera (New Republican online, 4/15)Democrats have to win from 45% to 48% of the white working class vote in heartland swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

With the country heading into a recession and voters disgusted with Bush's management of the economy, this could be a great year for Democrats. But only if working class voters believe that a Democratic President could understand their concerns.

The Main Challenge for School Reform

Changing demographics and the inability of our education system to adjust appears to be the major challenge to educational achievement in Washington State today.

Public school enrollments in Washington State have been flat over the past 20 years. While the white student population has actually declined, minority enrollment has increased from roughly 10% of enrollments in 1980 to nearly one-third in 2006.

People of color make up nearly 40% of our pre-school age population, one-third of our school age population, 22% of our working age only 10% of our retirement age populations.

In certain parts of the state, the contrasts are even starker. In Yakima County, Hispanics make up over three-quarters of the pre-school age population but less than a third of the voting age population.

Our education system has not responded well to the changing demographics. Perhaps some of this has to do with political make-up of the state. Children of color might be the major driver of school expansion; their parents are a relatively small proportion of the voting age population and an even smaller percentage of voters. Based on demographics alone, political power in the education world tilts away from the needs of minority kids.

Not surprisingly, this demographics imbalance is reflected in the make up of school personnel. While minority children make up 31% of the students in public schools, they are only 14% of the class room aides, 9% of the teachers and 4% of the superintendents. Students interact with school personnel who, despite their best efforts, struggle to understand the experience of their of their students.

Compounding this is the fact that more affluent white parents are much more active in the education system and are able to actively lobby schools and school districts to meet the needs of their kids. During my four years on a school board, few if any low income or minority parents showed up at school board meetings.

This pretty much tells the story of academic achievement in Washington State.
The achievement of students of color is significantly below that of whites.
Facing a school system designed for different kids, only one-half of the Black, Hispanic and Native American students actually graduate from high school.

The problem isn't that the kids who are becoming the majority of our school age population aren't able to keep up. Both the staff who run the schools and the voters who run the state have different cultures, different self-interests and often different languages.

The problem is that our schools are not oriented to meet their needs. Meeting this need may be the real key to school reform.

The Bush Economy

The most recent peak to peak economic cycle ran from 2000 to 2007 and spans all but one year of the presidency of George W. Bush. For the U.S. economy, this is likely one of the worst economic cycles on record. GDP grew at less than half the rate in 2000-2007 cycle that it did during the 1991 to 1999 period and was the longest seven year period since the mid-70s in which middle class incomes actually fell.

First of all, according to Business Week, the U.S. did not fare well in global competition, Our share of world economic output fell from 23.7% to 21.4% during this cycle. China, India and Russia saw their shares rise by more than 2% and the output shifts of Japan and other European economies was less than half of that of the U.S.

Secondly, our poor competitive situation translated into income declines for most Americans. In the same article, Business Week also reported that even college educated workers saw their wages fall by 1.4% during that period.

("As Business Cycle Ends and Many Workers Lose Ground", March 31, 2008 page 13),
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/03/0320_numbers/index_01.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

Looking at these numbers from a slightly different perspective, U.S. Census data shows that average real household income for middle 20% of American families fell by 2.5% during the 2000 to 2006 period (2007 data is not yet available). Not surprisingly, those in the bottom 20% saw a bigger decline of 4.5%. Even those at the top 20% only saw 1% increase in income during the 2000 to 2006 period.

Here's the catch. We are going in to the Bush recession after actually losing ground in the growth portion of the business cycle. Perhaps Americans feel so strongly that our nation is on the wrong track because they feel they are going into a bust without ever having a boom.

While the Bush administration actually gets it when it comes to recognizing the importance of global competition, their strategy of go it alone cowboy capitalism doesn't appear to be cutting it. Cutting taxes while cutting investments in education and infrastructure does not appear to be the winning strategy.

Public Access and the Legislative Process

During Washington's legislative session, hundreds of lobbyists stand outside the doors of the legislative chambers nabbing legislators and urging them to vote for or against bills impacting the financial well being of their clients.

Last year, I asked an intern to stand outside the doors with a Public Disclosure Commission report and add up the annual salaries of the lobbyists outside the doors of the house chamber. She came up with a figure of $13 million.

That's a lot of money and I'm sure their clients pay that hefty sum because they expect their lobbyists to exert a lot of influence.

Ordinary citizens do not. They cannot take time off from their jobs and come down to Olympia nor can they sit through lenghty hearings for the opportunity to state their views on issues impacting them and their families. And if they can, they'll only get a minute or two and only after waiting in line after a parade of special interest and government agency professional lobbyists. Given those odds, it should be no suprise that citizens are cynical about the political process.

It is true that through the electoral process they can elect legislators who represent their views. Legislative campaigns require citizen legislators to knock on doors, go to town halls and coffees and listen to and respond to the needs of constituents. And if citizens don't think they are listening, they don't have to vote for them.

But when they get to Olympia, to walk down the hall to their office or even to the legsislative chamber, they have to walk through the gauntlet of special interests day after day. If that were the only problem it might be manageable.

However, often times, lobbyists hold the key to coming to agreement with other legislators on key policy issues. They often represent clients from their districts and they often represent major economic interests of the state. They are always around and become part of the legislative social scene. During a time when property tax measures are being voted on, legislators may have been likely have a had a beer or a cup of coffee with a business lobbyist or two before they read that e-mail from a constituent.

There is some hope that technology could create a way to allow citizens to leap over the wall of lobbyists and directly provide their views on an ongoing basis. This session the Senate experimented with the idea of web dialogues or online hearings. Over 130 citizens participated in hearing on health care reform. Participants were not the ususal array of pharmaceutical and other special interst lobbyist but doctors, patients, nurses and other people directly on the front lines.

Can technology play a role in making politics more accessible?

It's the economy stupid

Iraq is about to be overshawdowed by the economy in the 2008 elections.

Economic security is rising on the public temperature gauge as the risk of stagflation is rising for the U.S. economy. Price increases are being spurred upward as the falling dollars is beginning to increase the cost of goods imported by U.S. consumers. Oil prices are nearing $100 per barrel and biofuels/ethanol production is beginning to increase food prices.

American consumers are stressed by rising health care costs, mortgage payments are doubling and tripling for many homeowners as the rash of adjustable rate mortgages sold a few years are resetting to much higher rates. For many middle class homeowners property taxes are increasing faster than incomes. The number of homeowners facing foreclosures has increased by 30% over the last year in Washington state. Businesses stretched by increasing health care and pension costs are beginning to cut back on basic benefits like paid family leave or even sick leave.

The deflation of the housing market is threatening either a recession or slower growth even as prices themselves are rising. Washington's economy is somewhat insulated from the national economy by the positive impact of the falling dollar on key Washington export industries such as software, aerospace and forest products. However, these local factors generally only delay the slipping of the national econonom thus the possibility of the staglation of the early 80s is on the rise.

These economic forces are hitting Washington Citizens hard in the pocketbook and increasing economic anxiety and stress on the electorate.

Democratic policy makers would be wise to focus on pocketbook issues to address this economic insecurity. In 2008, there are opportunities for controlling health care costs by regulating the individual health care market, progressive property tax reform, housing foreclosure assistance, affordable housing investments and paid family leave. And now is the time to begin to work on the bigger 2009 issues of health care reform, labor law reform and skyrocketing college tuition.

Democrats have a clear opportunity to demonstrate that they trully understand the needs of middle-class working Americans.

The Big Property Tax Lie

Wikepedia describes the Big Lie as "a propaganda technique in which the lie is so complex that the public will either dismiss it as impossible or choose not to believe it out of willful ignorance."

Last Thursday, the Governor called the legislature in to special session to restore a voter approved property tax initiative that was struck down by the Washington Supreme Court. The limit imposed by initiative 747 was the work of professional initiative writer Tim Eyman who, while earning six figure plus incomes for his efforts, predictably fails to write initiatives that are consistent with the state constitution.

The initiative limited the revenues that local governments and the state can receive from property taxes to a 1% increase per year. (The limit does not apply to new construction. For an in-depth description of the tax limit see http://dor.wa.gov/content/aboutus/statisticsandreports/wataxstudy/property%20tax%20alternatives.pdf

The Governor called the legislature in to town to restore the limit that the court struck down.

Once it was clear that the legislature was going to reimpose the limit, Eyman and his Republican army, immediately got to work on big lie #1. This lie was that the bill the legislature was writing wouldn't limit taxes. It in fact, would allow local governments to earn revenues from property taxes greater than 1% if they didn't fully impose the 1% limit in the past. This is known as banked capacity. If you don’t increase your revenues by 1% you can bank that for later use. Pretty complex huh? Well this is a great big lie opportunity.

The problem is that bank capacity was allowed under Eyman’s initiative and the legislative bill simply but the initiative in statute. But by turning on the smoke machine as the legislature came to town, Eyman’s Republicans were able to continue to attack the Governor and the legislature as they actually did Eyman’s bidding.

And for the most part it worked. The story of the day became, not restoring Eyman's initiative but fixing the "loophole". Eyman Gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi immediately started attacking the Governor for not fixing the "loophole" and Republicans demanded that it be fixed the first week of legislative session in January.

For a good analysis see http://www.olympiabusinesswatch.com/. Association of Washington Business Blogger Richard Davis concluded, "You give some guys Czechoslovakia, suddenly they want Poland, too."

Big lie #2 began when the Governor and legislators decided that if they were going to address property tax reform, they wanted to assure those being hit the hardest wouldn’t be taxed out of their homes. They wrote a bill that would allow taxpayers who earned median income or less to defer their property taxes to the future it they couldn't afford to pay them. The deferral was nearly identical to a deferral currently offered to senior citizens.

Big lie #2 was that this deferral was in fact predatory lending since taxpayers who deferred their taxes would have to pay interest on the taxes deferred. Although the interest was below the rate that homeowners would have to pay for comparable reverse mortgages and they wouldn't have the costly fees associated with those mortgages, predatory lending became the message of the day. One thoughtful Eymanite, Rep. Jim Dunn, called it on the House Floor, the "predatory wolf bill".

The irony of all this is that Washington’ taxes are the most regressive in the country. The percentage of income paid in taxes by median income tax payers is three times that of taxpayers earning over $130,000 per year. For those earning $20,000 per year or less, they pay up to five times that of the richest group. By raising the issue of income, the sponsors of the deferral bill were immediately under attack .

In reality, property taxes are not an issue for most citizens of Washington. But for middle and lower income families it can be a big cost. Real property tax relief would target those who actually need it and in the process make our tax system just a bit more progressive.

For example, if the state funded $100 million in property tax relief, it could spread the relief evenly throughout all taxpayers, it would make a tiny dent in the bill paid by a middle class taxpayer and most of the benefits would go to those who own the most wealth in the state – the biggest property owners. But if you took that $100 million and targeted it to taxpayers whose property tax bills exceed 5% of their income, it could make a real difference to a struggling working family.

But don’t expect Tim Eyman or Dino Rossi to embrace it.