And here it is: "Tax increases will be necessary in order to avoid the negative economic effects of deep budget cuts."

Those are words that very few politicians in Olympia, and definitely not those in close races, like Gov. Chris Gregoire, are willing to utter a few weeks before the election.

But the liberal-leaning Washington State Budget and Policy Center -- a private think tank -- say that tax increases are likely to do less damage to the economy than cuts to state spending.

With Washington's state government facing a projected $3.2 billion budget shortfall in the next two-year budget cycle, the center's budget analysts offer up some ideas. Among them:

-Tapping the state's new $700 million Rainy Day fund to help pay some of the bills,
-Careful state budget-trimming, rather than across-the-board cuts,
-Revisiting the state's hundreds of tax breaks to see if they're really justified. From 1995 to 2007, the group says, state lawmakers approved more than 100 tax breaks that total a combined $1.6 billion in the next two-year state budget cycle.
-Boosting the state's sales tax. Each increase of half a cent per dollar spent would yield another $1.1 billion in new money.
-Offsetting that boost for some low-income families by offering them a state match for the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.

Households with two or more kids can earn nearly $40,000 a year and qualify for the EITC. In Washington, that's 350,000 families that would get an average of $250 a year back from the state. That, the center says, is about twice what the same family would pay in additional sales tax.

"An increase in the sales tax should not be seen as a permanent solution to our fiscal problems," write study authors Jeff Chapman and Stacey Schultz. "A sunset clause would ensure that we can address our current revenue needs while planning a longer term solution that would include broadening the tax base, taxing income, reforming business taxation, and a robust Working Families Rebate."

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