Noting that state spending – not lack of revenues – has caused the state’s $2.4 billion budget deficit, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the state’s largest small-business advocacy group, has unveiled a study examining how spending has dramatically increased in our state over the last two decades. The study added fuel to the argument against tax hikes and the organization has vowed to fight any state tax increase proposal.

“If spending continues at its current rate, the deficit could reach $8 billion in the next biennium,” said Carolyn Logue, NFIB/Washington state director as she called on the legislature to hold the line on spending. “Our state needs to keep spending within revenues, make Initiative 601 part of our constitution, reprioritize government services, and privatize certain state services if we are to get out of this mess. One avenue not available is raising taxes, since you will eventually wind up with less revenues not more.”

The NFIB study found that all states expenditures rose from $191 billion in fiscal year 1977 to $1 trillion in fiscal year 2000. The sharpest growth occurred I the last 15 years with a 40 percent increase between 1986 and 2000. “We are the architects of our own budget woes,” said Logue. “The problem is home grown and so will the solution have to be.”

Eighty seven percent of NFIB/Washington’s 15,000 members, mostly small-business owners who employ six out of every 10 workers in the state, were opposed to expanding the sales tax to include personal and business services, while 94 percent wanted reduced state spending before any new tax increase. The survey also found members felt the state should reduce the number of it employees as a way to plug the budget deficit, followed by across-the-board agency reduction, freezing state employee hiring, and privatizing government services and enterprises.