A business-backed “educational” campaign on the budget and taxation

Plus other interesting action in the Legislature

The debate over whether to raise taxes to cover the state’s looming budget hole figures to get expensive and acrimonious in the coming months. An early salvo in that conversation launched this week in the form of “Budget Breakdown,” a campaign designed to frame the problem as the result of deliberate spending choices by the Legislature, rather than some sort of unexpected crisis.

The campaign is a project of Enterprise Washington, which advocates in the political arena for the broad interests of the business community in Washington. Enterprise Washington is most familiar to Observer readers as the brains behind a sprawling network of political action committees that mostly play in races for the Legislature.

But “Budget Breakdown” is deliberately designed to stop short of actual lobbying. The messaging is focused on the causes of the problem, rather than advocating for any particular solution. Here’s an example: