Braun: Tax-first Democrats desperate to blame feds for state’s budget trouble

One of the most enduring lines in conservative politics came from President Reagan’s campaign debates — the “there you go again” reply that so effectively called out his Democrat opponents when they made misleading or hypocritical claims.

That came to mind when I read Gov. Bob Ferguson’s Sept. 23 statement about the state’s third quarterly revenue forecast for 2025.

The forecast had been issued earlier that day by Washington’s non-partisan chief economist. It shows the operating budget for 2025-27, in effect only since July 1, is already on track to fall out of balance by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The reason is obvious. Despite signs a year ago that the state’s economy was slowing, and Republican efforts to keep spending under control, the Democrats still chose to accommodate the unaffordable demands of the special interests that flock around Olympia.

Even though they also passed the largest set of tax increases in state history, the new revenue forecast indicates there still won’t be enough tax dollars coming in to cover all the Democrats’ costly commitments.

It’s unprecedented for a state operating budget to be in trouble this soon, which explains why the governor and our Democratic colleagues are attempting to put the blame on actions taken by Republicans in Washington, D.C.
Ferguson’s statement about the forecast deserves the “there you go again” response because it quickly veers to repeating the same complaints about the new federal budget-reconciliation act that were cranked out by his press office right after H.R. 1 was passed in early July.

The Senate Democrats’ budget chair also chimed in, issuing a statement that was critical not only of the H.R. 1 reforms but also the tariffs that are in effect at the federal level.

I wouldn’t expect Ferguson or Democrat budget leaders to acknowledge their roles in inflating state spending to an unsustainable level. But it’s disingenuous for them to blame anyone else, especially federal Republicans.

Before President Trump was back in office, legislative Democrats were already moving forward with what Microsoft’s president recently and accurately called a “tax first” agenda.

When federal tariffs were first unveiled in early April, Democrats had already taken their first vote against the Senate Republicans’ no-new-taxes, no-cuts-to-services “$ave Washington” budget.

Had Gov. Ferguson and Democrat budget leaders been astute and recognized that the new federal leadership was likely to make some conservative changes to federal spending, they had ample time to dial back their spending wishes and tax dreams.

On top of all that, no one can declare with any certainty how our state’s budget may be affected by the H.R. 1 reforms that require more accountability for how Medicaid and food-assistance dollars from Washington, D.C. are used. That’s because most of those reforms won’t kick in until next year at the soonest.

The same goes for the tariffs. The governor has criticized them for months, and in early September, he and his budget office trotted out a highly speculative, partisan analysis that alleges their cost to state government would total $2.2 billion in revenue over the next four years.

Time will tell whether that claim is even close, but the hypocrisy is stunning – because the package of tax increases Ferguson and his fellow Democrats imposed this year will enrich state government by more than five times as much, all of it on the backs of Washington citizens.

Speaking of those taxes, our Senate Republican budget-policy expert recently shared an analysis of federal census data that brings important perspective to the Democrats’ tax-first agenda.

Based on the latest figures available, from 2023, a Washington family of four paid $5,276 more in state and local taxes and fees than the national average. Not only did that make our state 11th-worst nationally, the 2023 tax burden was nearly $8,000 more on average than the same Washington family was paying in 2020.

If you subtract states higher up the rankings that collect a significant amount of revenue through taxes on sales of natural resources — like Alaska, with its oil — Washington looks even more expensive.

Just imagine where our state will rank once the census data catches up with the 2025 tax increases.

It doesn’t matter how often Democrats here go back to their misleading and hypocritical claims, or how desperately they try to blame others, like national Republicans. As the majority party, Democrats alone are accountable for the decisions that have done the most to put the state budget at risk of collapsing.

The families of our state need a government that is willing and able to make living in Washington affordable. Instead, Democrats just keep making it more expensive. We must do better.

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Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.