Our new favorite Republican here at the blog is Senator Pam Roach.  Olympia buffs will remember that two years ago Senator Roach was thrown out of the Republican caucus and denied access to caucus staff and counsel in response to what Republican leadership felt was a pattern of abusive behavior.  Her colleagues apparently considered Senator Roach so toxic that this ban stuck for over two years.

Until the Friday night coup.

Senator Roach was one of several senators claiming to be the 25th vote that pushed the Republican-plus-the-Democratic-Pep-Boys (Rodney, Jim, and Tim) budget over the top on the night the lights went out in Olympia.  But what set her apart from everybody else was what she told the Seattle Times about why she voted for the budget: "When it got down to it there were some things I was asking of my caucus … one of them was the full restoration of going back into the caucus and access to staff. And that occurred."

While Senator Roach’s admission that she traded the most important vote of the legislative session for a seat in the caucus room and another shot at staff may seem a little frightening to some, we think it’s positively refreshing compared to some of the sanctimonious verbiage that’s been flowing around the budget vote.  Senators Tom, Kastama, and Sheldon, for example, took to the editorial pages of the Seattle Times to talk about “mortgaging our future,” “budget trickery,” and their own “[b]old leadership.”  To hear them tell it, you’d think that only their courage and willingness to make the hard choices stands between us and certain financial ruin at the hands of drunken Democrats willing to spend money faster than Sarah Palin on a shopping spree at Nordstrom’s.

To buy that line you have to buy the idea that moving a payment to school districts from 11:59 to 12:01 is an irresponsible gimmick while completely blowing off a payment to a contractually guaranteed pension program is just responsible budgeting.  To use the overused analogy to the family budget, it’s like being a little late with the rent versus skipping a mortgage payment.

The Senate Republican (er, sorry, “bi-partisan”) budget and the thinking behind it also imagines that our boom and bust economy and the nineteenth-century revenue structure that supports our public infrastructure are fixed in nature, like the tides.  All the somber talk about living within our means never considers that the means might be too small to support a healthy society.

And that’s what’s really at stake as we head into yet another special legislative session.  It’s not about which budget has the bigger gimmick or kicking a can or which senators have the most courage.  It’s about very different visions of the future of Washington.  The bi-budget looks to institutionalize a vision that concentrates wealth at the very top, taxes poor people at 5 times the rate of rich people, and starves public infrastructure, including the K-12 and higher education that everybody says they want to fund first.

Congratulations, Senator Roach, both on your return to the caucus room and your refreshing honesty.