From 2009 through 2012, Washington’s Legislature made policy-level spending cuts totaling $13.2 billion. They avoided even deeper cuts by modestly increasing revenues and transferring from other funds. Washington also received about $4 billion in federal stimulus funds over three biennia (2007-2013).
The austerity approach:
- caused significant, long-lasting harm to individuals and communities;
- reduced jobs and incomes, slowing economic recovery;
- exacerbated racial, gender, and regional inequality; and
- deprived working families, small businesses, and public agencies of the resiliency that would have put us in a much stronger position to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.