Governor Gregoire: All Your Budget Are Belong To UsLisa Brown: WHAT YOU SAY?!?

(here's what the title is about, for those who missed that particular craze)

In the "nobody will like this" department, Senator Lisa Brown (the majority leader, by gosh) is casting some aspersions on the Governor's proposed budget. To wit:

“We haven’t seen the details and I don’t want to get into specifics of this budget just yet. But I do see one glaring flaw in the governor’s approach.

“The governor assumes over a billion dollars of federal money to close the gap in critical health and human services.

“I’m glad the governor has confidence in the incoming Obama Administration, and I share her hope for a more positive direction from the federal government.

“But President-elect Obama has not been sworn in, and has gotten nothing through Congress yet.

Representative Frank Chopp, the House Speaker and the most powerful man in Washington State, isn't much happier:

Cuts in health care for children and services to the elderly, people who can’t work due to disabilities, and the mentally ill will be devastating to them and will cost us more in the long run.

The next budget proposal will come out of Brown's senate, where this document will probably be a guide; it lays out pretty starkly what the cuts could mean.

Then you've got Joe Turner over at the News-Tribune saying that he's hearing that there's going to be a tax increase proposed, and it makes you wonder just what Brown and Chopp will come out with. The no new taxes proposal was Gov. Gregoire's, not theirs.