A Budget in Name Only: SB 5810 Is a 1,000-Page Illusion
This month, Washington Senate Republicans introduced their long-awaited budget proposal, SB 5810, billing it as a “no-cuts, no-taxes” alternative to the current Democratic framework. At more than 1,000 pages, it’s a massive document — but as anyone who’s actually read it can tell you, page count does not equal substance.
Washington faces a $13 billion projected deficit over the four-year outlook. The budget Democrats passed this session includes proposals to close that gap by both raising revenue and targeting spending. The Republican proposal, on the other hand, does neither. Instead, SB 5810 leans on sleight-of-hand tactics, fund raids, and vague management trims that fall laughably short of what’s needed.
Let’s walk through the reality behind this bill.
One of the only concrete tactics used to “balance” this budget is a set of sweeps from dedicated accounts into the state’s general fund. These are not cuts, nor are they efficiencies. They’re one-time transfers that drain resources earmarked for specific programs and reallocate them to plug general budget holes — like emptying your kid’s college fund to cover your monthly rent.
Here’s just a sampling from the bill:
$20 million pulled from the Secretary of State’s revolving account — a fund that supports election administration and public records.
$4.1 million removed from the Industrial Insurance Premium Refund Account, which is designed to ease costs for employers and injured workers.
$2.75 million from the Medical Student Loan Account, compromising the state’s efforts to address physician shortages.
$944,000 diverted from the State Financial Aid Account — directly reducing support for low-income students.
$1 million swept from the Military Department Rent and Lease Account, which helps maintain National Guard readiness and facilities.
Altogether, these raids amount to around $50–100 million in scraped-together funds — a drop in the bucket compared to the billions Washington needs to close its deficit.
SB 5810 includes a single, sweeping mandate to reduce management staffing at every state agency by 10%. This provision appears only once, buried near the end of the bill, but it’s treated as the centerpiece of the Republican savings strategy.
There’s no explanation of which agencies are included, how this cut would be implemented, or what consequences it might have for essential services. “Management” isn’t defined — is it administrators in Human Services? Regional supervisors in wildfire response? IT managers who support court systems?
The bill simply instructs the Office of Financial Management to make the cuts and update agency allotments accordingly. In short, this is not a plan — it’s an accounting placeholder.
Estimated savings: $98 million over two years. That’s less than 1% of the total budget problem.
If you go searching through SB 5810 for additional ways the deficit is closed, you won’t find them. What you will find are hundreds of pages of re-appropriations, audit reports, and program descriptions that either:
Maintain existing spending levels,
Restate laws already in effect, or
Make funding contingent on bills that haven’t passed.
For example, the bill sets aside:
$400,000 for an audit of juvenile rehabilitation staffing.
$638,200 to implement a bill reviewing state spending (Senate Bill 5145) — which, as of this writing, hasn’t passed.
$14 million for technology upgrades and audits, most of which don’t include savings estimates.
None of these are budget-balancing measures. They’re minor bureaucratic tweaks — some useful, some performative — that do nothing to resolve the structural mismatch between revenue and expenses.
Senate Republicans made a political choice to rule out new taxes, but they also refuse to specify any large-scale service cuts. In fact, their budget maintains or slightly increases spending on many public services — from Blake decision implementation to election security grants to civil legal aid for tenants.
That’s not inherently bad. It shows they recognize the state has real needs. But by refusing to backfill the gap with revenue, they create a fantasy budget that works only on paper — and only temporarily.
Their own math admits as much Roughly $200 million in total “savings” against a $13 billion four-year gap means they’ve solved about 1.5% of the problem.
In the end, SB 5810 isn’t a serious attempt to balance Washington’s budget. It’s a political message bill, designed to give the appearance of fiscal responsibility while avoiding the hard truths of governance.
Instead of a true alternative, it offers a mirage — one that hides behind bureaucratic language, raided accounts, and hollow austerity slogans.
Republicans in Olympia are welcome to oppose new taxes. They are even welcome to advocate for smaller government. But they are not entitled to pretend they’ve solved the budget crisis just because they’ve filled a binder with numbers.
SB 5810 is 1,000 pages long and solves 1% of the problem. Washington deserves a budget that meets the moment — not a 1,000 page spreadsheet in drag.
