Washington State deficit 1

Today I received a legislative update from my Washington State Senator, Ed Murray, which proudly claimed that the 2009 biennial budget was smaller than the 2007 one.

In Washington State, a two-year budget is passed every two years. The most recent budget, mentioned in the legislative update, is for the period from July 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011.

Unfortunately, that claim in Senator Murray's legislative update is false. On Washington State's official fiscal information website ("promoting transparency in state government"), each budget since 1998 (the first year of data available) not only was larger than the prior year, but also increased at a rate well over double that of the consumer price index (CPI).

Here's the data:
Please see below. A large whitespace gap appears to be being automatically generated above the html table :(

fiscal year	total budget	yearly increase	CPI
1998	$19,000,980,000	N/A	1.6%
1999	$20,396,296,000	7.3%	2.2%
2000	$21,466,622,000	5.2%	3.4%
2001	$23,068,921,000	7.5%	2.8%
2002	$24,382,416,000	5.7%	1.6%
2003	$25,145,488,000	3.1%	2.3%
2004	$25,965,575,000	3.3%	2.7%
2005	$27,497,721,000	5.9%	3.4%
2006	$29,184,992,000	6.1%	3.2%
2007	$31,332,251,000	7.4%	2.8%
2008	$33,220,243,000	6.0%	3.8%
2009	$35,272,627,000	6.2%	-0.4%
2010	$35,721,020,000	1.3%	N/A
2011	$36,928,289,000	3.4%	N/A
1998-2009		85.6%	31.6%

For the years 1998 through 2009 (for which I could find both state budget expenditures and CPI information), Washington State expenditures increased 85.6% at the same time the CPI increased 31.6%.

Such apparently obvious excessive spending didn't make sense to me. I thought about it, and then realized that the state population was also increasing during this time. Thus, the relevant comparison should be per-capita spending and associated growth.

Here is per capita data:
Please see below. A large whitespace gap appears to be being automatically generated above the html table :(

fiscal year	population	per-capita spending	yearly increase	CPI
1998	5,570,033	$3,304	N/A	1.6%
1999	5,830,835	$3,498	5.9%	2.2%
2000	5,894,143	$3,642	4.1%	3.4%
2001	5,974,910	$3,861	6.0%	2.8%
2002	6,041,710	$4,036	4.5%	1.6%
2003	6,098,300	$4,123	2.2%	2.3%
2004	6,167,800	$4,210	2.1%	2.7%
2005	6,256,400	$4,395	4.4%	3.4%
2006	6,375,600	$4.578	4.2%	3.2%
2007	6,488,000	$4,829	5.5%	2.8%
2008	6,587,600	$5,043	4.4%	3.8%
2009	6,668,200	$5,290	4.9%	-0.4%
1998-2009	16.0%		60.1%	31.6%

Unfortunately, including considerations of population growth didn't help as much as I had hoped. Washington state government spending on a per-capita basis still increased at nearly twice the CPI rate (60.1% vs. 31.6% from 1998 to 2009), and that excludes any lost potential benefits of economies of scale.

I'm extremely disappointed by the deceptive politics and seemingly endless excessive government spending, even here in Washington.


Washington State expenditure history is available at http://fiscal.wa.gov/FRViewer.aspx?Rpt=Recast%20History%20Expenditure%20Statewide%20Summary

Washington State population data is available at http://www.ofm.wa.gov/pop/april1/cociseries/default.asp

U.S. BLS CPI data is available at http://data.bls.gov:8080/PDQ/outside.jsp?survey=cu