State budget: Think tank advice rings hollow

Re: “Don’t wait to act on state budget mess,” (TNT, 7/12).

Concerning this opinion piece from the Washington Policy Center, I find it surprising that it would advocate severe budget cuts for Washington State when the center received somewhere between $350,000 and $1 million through a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program.

Why should the state follow the advice of a think tank that won’t apply its own free-market logic to its operations?

If the Washington Policy Center and Jason Mercier want to advocate for state government to drastically slash its budget, maybe they should start by dealing with their own budget crisis through program reductions, instead of taking federal loans.

If they had shown more ideological consistency and conviction, then it might be possible to take their advice for addressing the state budget more seriously.

As it is, it seems that our governor is waiting for federal aid to fix the Washington state budget crisis in the same manner that the center fixed its own budget crisis.

This story was originally published July 18, 2020 at 9:25 AM with the headline "State budget: Think tank advice rings hollow."