The Washington state Legislature gavels in for a short, 60-day session this week.
Before the first bill is even read, we’ve already been flooded with warnings from our local legislators: Democrats are coming for your paycheck, schools are unsafe, Olympia is drowning in fraud.
It’s a familiar routine. In the absence of coherent policies, generating fear and outrage becomes the strategy. The panic, hyperbole and culture-war distractions offer little to working families trying to get by, but they do help shield big business, the ultra-wealthy and scurrilous politicians from scrutiny.
It’s important to recognize what’s actually at stake this year versus what’s just a bunch of noise meant to distract us. For instance, despite huge cuts across the board in 2025, Republicans are still pushing the idea that the state has a “spending problem.”
This doesn’t hold up when you consider Gov. Bob Ferguson has proposed $800 million more in cuts this year after already cutting nearly $6 billion last year. But those cuts aren’t arbitrary swings of a chainsaw; they’re unfortunate side effects of our regressive tax system.
Just slashing big chunks of spending for the sake of lower numbers on a spreadsheet is irresponsible. If you add more items to the list of losses that Ferguson outlined, what does that look like? It looks like less money for classrooms, hospitals, roads and local budgets, especially in rural areas like ours.
Republican legislators have yet to release a detailed list of the cuts they’d make on top of Ferguson’s proposal. Instead, the strategy is to pretend that institutions like public schools or childcare centers are flush with cash but waste it on fraud or supposedly frivolous programs.
These claims have turned classrooms and daycares into cultural battlegrounds. That becomes the whole conversation instead of the chronic underfunding and real challenges these services face and that go unaddressed year after year.
Waste and fraud happen all over the country, at varying levels of severity. It should be rooted out and prosecuted. But notice where the outrage is typically aimed. Programs serving working families are endlessly scrutinized, while corporate tax breaks and loopholes rarely attract the same attention.
We’re supposed to believe that those who avoid paying taxes should be celebrated and left alone while those who rely on public assistance should be treated as untrustworthy and wasteful.
Instead of casting suspicion on childcare workers and teachers, I’d love to see our local legislators point out the obvious places where waste exists.
But I’m not sure we’ll see any of them write editorials about the fact that we could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars by simply closing the top 10 worst corporate tax loopholes in the state. Democrats closed several of them in 2025, but not a single Republican supported the effort.
You can clearly see the divide between serious policy and performative legislation in the bills filed so far for this year’s session. Democrats have openly acknowledged that Washington’s tax code is overly regressive and are discussing ways it can be reformed so that tax bills go down for working families without facing deep cuts to public services they rely on.
Republicans have focused on repealing last year’s sales-tax changes outright, without offering a replacement. Full repeal sounds tough and decisive, but it doesn’t lower costs in any targeted way, and it blows a hole in the budget.
If they paired their supposed relief plan with a wealth tax and used the revenue to offset the cut — which is essentially what Ferguson is now proposing — the budget might balance. But that trade-off isn’t politically attractive to those who benefit most from the status quo.
Democrats’ approach accepts the reality that the state needs revenue, while aiming to reduce the burden on people who feel every extra dollar at the checkout counter. Republicans’ approach is about generating sympathy for those who are already advantaged by the current system.
When it comes to schools, we see proposals from Republicans that generate headlines but do nothing to solve the financial and logistical problems districts actually face. They prefer legislation that polices classroom content or stokes parental fear. Meanwhile, Democrats are advancing bills aimed at stabilizing funding, improving special education support, and addressing staffing shortages.
In each case, the difference is the same. Democrats are trying to rework systems that exist so they function more fairly. Republicans are trying to tear systems down and call it reform while maintaining the status quo for the rich and powerful.
This year’s session is a short one, so we don’t have time for politics as entertainment. Lewis County families are dealing with real costs and real pressures. We need lawmakers focused on practical, boring policies that keep services working and make the tax code less upside-down. That’s the standard we should be demanding.
So the next time you encounter the manufactured outrage that’s become so common in our politics, ask yourself this simple question: Is this meant to help my family, or is this simply meant to make me mad? If it’s the second one, then you should reject it as the cynical, dangerous ploy that it is, and demand that your representatives start offering real solutions instead of talking points.
Stoking fear and outrage is not a replacement for governance. We can discourage its use by holding our representatives to a higher standard and by listening beyond the loudest voices in the room.
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Zac Eckstein is chair of the Lewis County Democratic Party. Learn more about the party at https://lewiscountydemocrats.org.
