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	21,849,952,660
1993	19,135,539,090
1994	20,824,221,490
1995	22,476,286,190
1996	23,123,315,180
1997	23,663,943,230
1998	23,790,591,000
1999	25,274,319,520
2000	25,409,040,960
2001	28,003,533,880
2002	28,901,457,150
2003	29,211,090,500
2004	29,230,372,490
2005	28,274,707,340
2006	29,879,187,320
2007	31,645,272,810
2008	32,604,228,560
2009	33,366,410,900
2010	31,216,486,570
2011	30,800,117,840
2012	30,842,674,250
2013	31,374,172,010
2014	32,542,170,050
2015	34,086,761,970
2016	35,387,388,710
2017	37,613,952,090
2018	38,353,715,000
2019	42,212,696,390
2020	44,578,310,980
2021	44,630,072,460
2022	44,651,000,000

*All spending figures are in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars.