I've been watching our Washington State Legislature with interest since it convened in early January. Alas, it has been an odd year in Olympia.

The session is scheduled to end on Easter Sunday, just a short time from now, but unless a miracle happens they will never finish on time. That will mean a special session, with its weeks, maybe months of drawn out debate and additional costs to taxpayers.

The holdup is of course the operating budget. The voters have removed the ability of the legislature to increase taxes for the next two years, and even if the legislature retained that ability legislators understand that any taxes enacted would not be allowed to stand. That leaves the legislature with only one option; they must reduce the amount of money they desire to spend.

Such reductions are horrors to the men and women we elect, horrors to members of both major political parties. So, currently our legislature stands at a stalemate.

When contemplating this stalemate it should be remembered that the Democratic party controls both the Senate and the House, plus the Governor's mansion. The Republicans do not have the power to stop or control anything, so this is entirely a Democratic stalemate.

It's my understanding that the Senate has developed an operating budget that could pass that chamber with votes in favor from both parties, but they are not releasing their budget because tradition dictates that the House has the right to go first this year.

In the House I understand that the Chairman of Ways and Means, and his committee has developed an operating budget, but that when the budget was shown to House Speaker Chopp it was rejected out of hand.

That is where things stand when the legislature returns to work on Monday morning.

I find this interesting because of the sheer refusal to reduce any spending, even that spending that is clearly nonsensical. For example, last week, lots of us saw the expose on KING 5 news showing the blatant fraud in state food assistance programs. The week before that we learned from KIRO news that we waste thirty thousand dollars putting a single sign up along one of our freeways. These are simple and small examples of the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars rampant throughout our system.

The State of Washington will collect more money over the next two years than it collected over the past two years. The next budget, when it is finally passed, will spend billions more dollars than the budget of ten short years ago.

Legislators talk about cutting billions of dollars in spending. That does not however mean that they will spend billions less next year than they spent this year, it means that they will spend billions less than what they wanted to spend. A cut in spending to legislators is not the same as a cut in spending to a household's budget. To you and I a cut means a reduction in spending from what was spent previously. Legislators, and those who live off of government handouts, have a different definition.

This coming week massive protests are planned to be held at our state capitol. Protesters will be calling for more taxes to support more spending. Remember though when watching the news or reading the paper that code words are being used.

Protestors and their legislative allies will not talk about raising taxes on the people and families of our state, they will talk about 'closing tax loopholes.' They will not talk about increasing the number of dollars spent from this year to next; they will talk about 'budget cuts.' It is important to read through this misuse of our language in order to properly understand what is being protested against.

In the meantime, while the government paid protesters scream and holler, the legislature will remain locked in a kind of stasis, Democratic leadership too afraid to make the decisions our constitution requires of them.

Thank God our state constitution severely limits their ability to borrow money.