Senate Republicans spent today — Saturday of Easter weekend — fighting against billions of dollars in new and higher taxes proposed by Senate Democrats.
Over four years, these tax bills cost taxpayers…
- SB 5813: $1 billion to $1.5 billion
- SB 5814: $4.6 billion in state taxes, $2.7 in local taxes
- SB 5794: $600 million
- SB 5797: $100 million — a test case for a $12 billion “wealth” tax (pulled at the last minute — saved for another day)
The majority passed every tax proposal, even though the Senate Republican budget written by Sen. Chris Gildon, Puyallup, and Sen. Nikki Torres, Pasco, proves new taxes are completely unnecessary to balance the state budget.
All we hear from Democrats are inflated claims about the size of the budget shortfall, disingenuous excuses for new spending, and hollow justifications for taking billions of dollars more from taxpayers. People aren’t buying it.
Watch the following clips to get a sense of how today’s debate.
Important floor speeches from today’s debate:
- Sen. John Braun, 20th LD
- Sen. Chris Gildon, 25th LD
- Sen. Nikki Torres, 15th LD
- Sen. Drew MacEwen, 35th LD
- Sen. Keith Wagoner, 39th LD
- SPECIAL: Sen. Chris Gildon tries to force the majority to allow the Senate to vote on the Republican budget (no taxes, no cuts to services)
Read the statement from the Senate Republican budget leads.
Democrats poised to throw K-12 education back into disarray, triggering McCleary 2.0
One of the most contentious concepts this session has been the Democrats’ pursuit to increase the annual allowable rate by which state and local governments can increase your property taxes without a vote of the people.
The version of this policy that is moving forward is House Bill 2049. It triples the annual cap from 1% to 3%.
The latest development on this legislation is that Democrats have sponsored a last-minute striking amendment that would return our K-12 education funding system to the same as it was when the State Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional.
Increasing local levy (taxing) authority
The amendment would increase the taxing authority for local K-12 school levies. This means that large cities with higher property values, such as Seattle, will see a small increase in their property taxes for additional school funding. Smaller cities and rural areas will see much larger increases to their property taxes and still won’t be able to raise the kind of money Seattle can.
Worsens the education gap
This creates dramatic inequity in basic education funding across Washington. It sets the stage for the Washington State Supreme Court to strike down our K-12 funding system as unconstitutional — AGAIN.
Before the Legislature addressed the inequities in K-12 funding back in 2017, the local levy authority was 28% of state appropriations with 14% state levy equalization for poorer districts. The amendment proposed on SB 5798, WHICH WAS INTRODUCED YESTERDAY AND HAS NOT HAD A PUBLIC HEARING, would take us to 30% local levy authority and 15% equalization.
McCleary 2.0
In short…the amendment doesn’t just take us back in time to an education funding situation that was ruled to be unconstitutional, it makes it even worse than before.
What are Democrats thinking? Why recreate an illegal funding system that will land us back in court? Why deliberately widen the education gap?
This proposed amendment will cause a crisis in K-12 education without any chance for the public to weigh in. We expect that the majority will pass it.
This amounts to fiscal incompetence and bad governance.
“New polling: Washingtonians strongly oppose tax hikes being pushed in state budget”
Napolitan News Service released a new poll that shows Washingtonians are opposed to the effort to balance the state budget with the strongest tax increase in state history.
Important findings from the poll include:
- 80% believe slowing the growth of government spending is a better way to solve Washington’s budget shortfall (only 12% believe spending should continue to grow, along with taxes.)
- 68% prefer a budgeting approach that does NOT raise taxes (only 7% would opposed a no-tax approach.)
- 77% oppose tripling the maximum allowable annual property tax rate increase.
- 69% oppose increasing an increase in the tax on consumers.
It’s clear that Washingtonians do NOT want new and higher taxes. They aren’t buying the excuse that we need new taxes to back fill the budget shortfall or that we need to increase spending right now.