So the budget that nobody read but all the Senate Republicans and three nominal Democrats voted for as the clock struck midnight turned out to be a bit of an embarrassment.  It seems that the “fund education first” crowd had written a budget that cut education by another 80 mil or so, which quickly became a little awkward for the Zarellistas, the Road Kill renegades, and the putative Republican gubernatorial nominee.    

But not to worry.  Even as the education crowd was flooding Olympia with outraged emails and phone calls, the Zarellistas sharpened up their pencils and presto, not four days into the special session a new budget appeared, this time without those unsightly education cuts. 

That education cuts can come and go with relative ease in the Zarelli budget should come as no surprise, since what gets funded and what doesn’t is not really what this budget proposal is really about. To find the long-term ideological bedrock of the Zarelli budget we need to turn to the trinity of a blown-off pension payment, charter schools, and a state takeover of K-12 employee health care.  These things are all part of the latest R-plus-3D budget even though the first one is exactly the sort of “gimmick” about which Republicans have repeatedly berated Democrats, the second one doesn’t save a dime and would certainly end up draining public education even further, and the third one would actually cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. 

But never mind all that fiscal responsibility stuff, what the three pillars of the Zarelli budget have in common is that they all further eviscerate the public sphere and take specific aim at the state’s biggest public sector union, the Washington Education Association.  You have to give Washington’s Republican/Road Kill politicians credit for their ability to learn from the experiences of their colleagues in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana.  Instead of overreaching to do away with public infrastructure and collective bargaining all at once and risking massive 99% backlash, our guys are coming at us piecemeal.  Makes them look reasonable by comparison. 

Before the ink was dry on the newest budget proposal, Governor Gregoire told the Zarellistas to “get over it” and promised to veto charter schools.  And the skipped pension payment is locked in a staring match with the Democrats’ apportionment payment delay.   

That leaves the health care takeover.  If we take the State Auditor and the State Health Care Authority at their word, Senate Bill 6442 (the bill included in the Zarelli budget that mandates the state takeover of K-12 employee health care) would do at least four things: create a new state bureaucracy, cost the state tens of millions of dollars, reduce health care for over a hundred thousand underpaid teachers and school workers while denying health care altogether to thousands of others, and, most importantly to the Republicans/Road Kills, take away collective bargaining rights.  The Zarellistas claim that 6442 will eventually save money, which could be true, but only because the added bureaucracy will be paid for and more by reduced health care for all and no health care for many.

History will no doubt judge us very harshly when it comes to health care.  Future generations will probably look back on our current health arrangements the way that we look back on slavery.  Here at the blog, we haven’t been to church in a while, but we still know that it is surely a sin that the richest country in history allows some people to go without medical care and other people to profit from pain.  The future will surely see us as barbaric for not understanding health care as a basic human right rather than a “benefit” to be reduced and exchanged for a budget deal.

But until that future comes, we should not take away the ability of school employees to have at least some say in their access to medical care.  Whatever else it will or won’t do, taking away the right to collectively bargain health care will mean that our teachers and other school employees will pay more and get less.  A lot of the real Democrats are going to get a lot of pressure to vote for the health care takeover, especially if charter schools and the pension gimmick go away.  The health care takeover will start to look like a compromise rather than the fundamental retreat that it is.

As they consider that vote, we hope they’ll keep at least one eye on the long-term consequences. 

If they come in the morning for some collective bargaining rights, they’ll be coming tonight for all of them.