Michele Thomas, Director of Policy and Advocacy

Tuesday was the last day of the first special session. And since no agreement on a budget deal was reached, the Governor announced a new special session that will begin today, Wednesday, June 12. Relatively speaking, this is actually good news. Since the Senate is still insisting on deep cuts, it's very good to see both the House and the Governor standing strong to protect the safety net and to resist the devastating cuts and reforms that the Senate is adamantly pushing.

Recap of the past few days

Here is a quick timeline of what has happened over the last couple days:

• The House passed a new budget late last week that significantly scaled back their spending and revenue. This budget still protects the Housing and Essential Needs program; the Aged, Blind & Disabled program; and the Consolidated Homeless Grants, but takes significant funding away from the Capital Budget. The impacts on the House Capital Budget proposal are not yet known.
• The House also introduced a bill last week, HB 2069, that aligns Housing and Essential Needs and the Aged, Blind & Disabled programs with Medicaid expansion. It passed the House with significant bipartisan support and is now awaiting action in the Senate.
• The Senate passed a new budget last weekend that still includes the significant cuts to affordable housing and homelessness programs that would cause at least 20,000 people to become homeless. The good news is that the vote on the Senate's new budget was a lot narrower, with many who initially voted yes on the first Senate budget voting no this time around. This includes Senators Eide, Fraser, Hargrove, Hatfield, Mullet and Nelson all changing their votes. Senator Hobbs was excused.
• Early this week, the Senate acted on some revenue bills that would restore funding to Housing and Essential Needs and the Aged, Blind & Disabled program (SB 5873), but don’t restore cuts to the Consolidated Homeless Grants. These revenue bills are being held hostage in exchange for politically divisive “reform” bills that the Senate wants, including a new tax cut for millionaires (SB 5872).
• Also early this week, the House passed a Capital Budget that only includes reappropriations of previously allocated capital funds to ensure that projects, including affordable housing projects funded through the State Housing Trust Fund, can keep can keep going into the new biennium which begins July 1. There is no agreement between the House and Senate on the Capital Budget yet.
• The Governor held a press conference recently, in which he said it was a shame that the Senate is holding the state budget hostage in order to secure tax cuts for millionaires. He also announced a second special session and that his office is planning for a possible government shutdown which would occur if there is no agreement reached by July 1.
• The Senate Majority Coalition Caucus continues to come under scrutiny as they insist on holding a budget deal hostage in exchange for passing destructive and politically divisive bills dubbed “reforms”, including a predatory lending bill SB 5312.

One of the reforms the Senate is pushing for is SB 5895. This is the bill that would limit state spending on social service programs for many years, thereby effectively ending any chance of undoing some of the $11 billion in cuts that have been implemented in the last several years. Senator Jeannie Darneille (27th-Tacoma) reportedly dubbed it the "Defund the Human Services for the Poor and Disabled Act of 2013."  This bill is a very bad idea.

Will the government shut down?

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Governor Inslee raised the alarm level on the possibility of a government shutdown when he announced that he had ordered his staff to prepare for it. While the concept of a shutdown has been thrown around in Olympia for the past month or more, it was largely seen as political posturing. As we get nearer to the fiscal deadline of July 1, the panic level will continue to rise. Nearly all stakeholders – the political parties, government employees, vulnerable people relying on a check from the state – agree that a government shutdown would be irresponsible and dangerous for us all. It will be important during the next several weeks to not let this distract from attention and public pressure on the Senate to agree to the House’s budget proposals.

What’s next?

With the majority of the House and Senate Democrats in alignment with the Governor, pressure is increased on the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus to continue to negotiate. Coupled with unrelenting advocacy calls from constituents, we can continue to weaken their resolve. Keep the calls, emails, and other advocacy going!! It is totally unclear how long they will need to finish the budget, but we need to take advantage of the extra time to keep advocating.

Special thanks to all the amazing volunteers and the amazing Housing Alliance staff who are working hard making calls and mobilizing like crazy.

For a broader overview and comparison between the current proposals see the Budget and Policy Center’s Schmudget blog.

For an overview of what a government shutdown could look like see The Olympian’s recent article on what this would look like.