Washington

Washington had a number of statutory tax and expenditure limits but the expenditure limit was replaced by additional four-year balanced budget requirements under Senate Bill 6660, signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee and enacted on July 1, 2020. The amendments to the Washington Revised Code require the governor’s budget to, “leave, in total, a positive ending fund balance in the general fund and related funds,” and “must not exceed the available fiscal resources for the next ensuing fiscal biennium.” It limits revenue forecasts to the greater of the official general fund and related funds revenue forecast for the ensuing biennium or the official general fund and related funds forecast for the second fiscal year of the current fiscal biennium, increased by 4.5% for the next two years.

This bill did remove emergency exceptions for the 2/3 supermajority requirement in both the House and the Senate to raise taxes.

The base year represents the year the hypothetical Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) would have been enacted. Selecting a base year changes how the state’s TABOR is calculated because the annual growth rates of inflation and population change depending on when TABOR is enacted.

Year	Inflation-adjusted Actual Spending
1992	21,972,540,000
1993	19,186,290,000
1994	20,838,820,000
1995	22,309,440,000
1996	22,753,010,000
1997	23,115,900,000
1998	23,133,550,000
1999	24,307,100,000
2000	24,246,510,000
2001	26,531,120,000
2002	27,361,440,000
2003	27,647,280,000
2004	27,547,960,000
2005	26,614,630,000
2006	27,829,760,000
2007	29,522,500,000
2008	30,064,560,000
2009	30,937,280,000
2010	28,975,310,000
2011	28,326,800,000
2012	28,392,380,000
2013	28,744,560,000
2014	29,687,240,000
2015	31,153,290,000
2016	32,369,760,000
2017	34,358,840,000
2018	34,739,840,000
2019	38,031,550,000
2020	40,434,000,000

*All spending figures are in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars.