This is the long version of a story that appears today (Sunday) in our print edition. The print version is about 45 column inches. This one is about 70 inches. That's the great thing about on-line newspapers: Virtually no space limitation.

This version is for you budget junkies.

UPDATE: I got a couple calls from folks who thought it only fair that I point out the Democratic House Speaker Frank Chopp voted FOR what is now called "the Rossi budget" in final passage. True. Chopp was one of 28 House Democrats who voted for the budget. I should also point out that was after the House and Senate had negotiated something of a compromise, although Rossi, Locke and the Senate Republicans did roll the House speaker.

Also, Chopp voted against freezing salaries for teachers and other public school employees for two years.

Joseph Turner
joe.turner@thenewstribune.com
Listening to television ads, you’d think the candidates for governor couldn’t balance their own checkbooks, let alone manage a $70 billion two-year state budget.
The “Rossi budget” and the “Gregoire deficit” are terms that are tossed about routinely in the rematch between incumbent Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire and Republican challenger Dino Rossi.
Neither phrase is a compliment.
The two candidates have each had a shot at writing a state budget and approached it differently. But each of them also was forced to play the hand that was dealt them by the ups and downs of the Washington and national economies.
In short: Rossi proposed and oversaw a budget that radically cut or froze state spending because he was the chief budget-writer for the Republican state Senate in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that sent Washington’s still aircraft-dependent economy into a downward spiral.
Gregoire became governor as the economy was rebounding, giving her administration much more money to spend -- enough, in fact, for her to make up for some of the cuts made in the previous two years.
Now, Washington once again is facing another $3 billion deficit. Job growth, economic activity and state government tax collections have slowed so much that it feels like a recession, and could easily tip into one because of the housing and financial crisis on the national stage.
So, let’s take a look at how we got here.

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