SPOKANE, Wash.–With a federal budget deal being debated in Congress right now, including a great divide around balancing potential tax cuts with the impact on the federal deficit, credit unions here got a glimpse of a similar issue at the state level.
Duane Davidson, who was elected as Washington State Treasurer in 2016 in his first statewide position, said Washington State is “becoming known as a high debtor state” and it’s becoming an issue.
Davidson said the state is spending $2 billion every year in debt servicing, including $1 billion in interest.
“The politicians in (state capital) Olympia have just gotten used to the low interest rate environment for so long that it has made borrowing very, very appealing to them,” said Davidson during the Northwest Credit Union Association’s MAXX annual meeting here. “And we getting to the point if interest rates start going up we are going to have to start making some changes. We need a plan and some discipline. We just can’t take on that much more debt in this state.”
Davidson, whose wife died while he was running for office and who stayed in the race after his children insisted and his youngest daughter asked to delay college for a year so as to manage his campaign, said his office is currently working on a Debt Affordability Study that it plans to send to every legislator’s home for review prior to returning to the capitol.
“We all know the thing that gets legislators excited the most is when you talk to their constituents, so another thing we are going to do is put out a Readers’ Digest version (of the study) and put that on our website and get that out to groups,” he said. “We want to get into the hands of as many people as we can, so hopefully, that message over concern about the state’s debt has constituents talking to their legislators.”
Separately, Davidson said he also has a strong interest in financial literacy, but not in the areas where credit unions most often focus. Most organizations, he said, focus on students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
“But I see even a greater need for it in our troops and in the migrant community,” he said. “It upset me a lot to see people picking crops for us who are unscrupulously preyed upon because of their lack of understanding of the language.”