It's a good thing that the legislature doesn't pass every bill they write. However, it only takes a couple of bills to pass to cause severe financial hardships on the taxpayers.
Sign up to the OFM emails - unless you have a weak heart.
So far, out of thousands of bills, OFM has notified us of only a handful. I selected 24 from the emails OFM sent out. I put the numbers into excel and was astounded by the unbridled reach of "our" legislators. OFM has notified us of other bills that don't yet have the ten year cost figured out.
24 bills. Ten year projection (2017) of ..... $115,633,241,345 in new fees and taxes proposed!
HB 2640 Establishing the guaranteed health benefit program act:
FY 2010 - $ 3,139,000,000
FY 2011 - $ 7,705,000,000
FY 2012 - $ 7,898,000,000
FY 2013 - $ 8,095,000,000
FY 2014 - $ 8,297,000,000
FY 2015 - $ 8,504,000,000
FY 2016 - $ 8,717,000,000
FY 2017 - $ 8,935,000,000
Total - $61,290,000,000
Just this one bill could cost every single person in this state over $8,600 in eight years. For a family of four, it averages out to over $4,300 a year. Sure, some of the taxes would be on producers and businesses, but in the end, the individual taxpayer will pay the price.
With bills HB-2420, HB-2421, HB-2425, and HB-2640, by 2017 these taxes would be close to $16 billion a year.
Between now and 2017, we have five more budget cycles and who's to say, will our $23 billion 2005 budget be closer to $120 billion by 2017?
At the current rate that Gregoire and this legislature are going, $120 billion may be a gigantic understatement.
Posted by SouthernRoots at February 06, 2008 05:21 PM | Email ThisInitiative 960 Website: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/tax/default.asp
Posted by: SouthernRoots on February 8, 2008 01:25 PMI, too, was kind of shocked that the numbers were billions and not millions.
And who is to say that it is understating the cost.
Posted by: swatter on February 8, 2008 04:45 PMUnder this plan, a single payer model, that 4300/year would work out to $358/month. So, how is this a bad thing? My company saves money. I save money. We get the same quality health care. The single payer model saves money through combining the millions of separate risk pools, preventing for-profit companies from "cherry picking", and reducing billing overhead. In no other country that I know, does a doctors office have TWO people per doctor just to handle billing issues. Single payer is tried, tested, and works. Period.
Posted by: proteus on February 10, 2008 09:38 PM