Democrats swear the cupboard is bare—right after ordering another round on the taxpayer’s tab.

Olympia’s “Revenue Crisis”: When Spending Like a Drunken Sailor Meets a Calculator

Democrats keep chanting “revenue crisis,” but the numbers tell a simpler story: Washington doesn’t have a money problem, it has a spending addiction. House Republicans’ Affordability First budget framework lays it out plainly—state government has built a bureaucracy that grows faster than taxpayers’ paychecks, then blames the public when the bill comes due.

Despite claims that tax collections are somehow lagging, General Fund revenues have climbed steadily since 2011. Translation: money is coming in. The issue is that Olympia spends it even faster. And while Democrats like to call Washington a “low-tax state,” residents face some of the highest combined sales taxes in the country, plus an anti-business B&O tax that punishes revenue instead of profit—helping drive one of the nation’s highest business failure rates.

The state now leans heavily on a tiny sliver of taxpayers to bankroll a bloated government. Fewer than 4,000 people paid nearly $900 million in capital gains taxes in a single year. That’s not “fairness”—that’s a risky bet that the same small group will stick around forever.

The real culprit is runaway spending. Since 2019, the biennial operating budget has exploded by 66%, turning pandemic-era emergency spending into the new normal. State employee pay hikes, a new $18 minimum wage floor, richer benefits, and a taxpayer-funded 85/15 health care split have locked in roughly $3 billion in permanent new costs—before lawmakers even dream up the next program.

Speaking of new programs: Apple Health Expansion blew past its enrollment cap in days and is now on track to become another open-ended liability. Add in administrative-heavy tax credits and housing funds that magically morph from “one-time” to “forever,” and voilà—a $4.3 billion deficit.

Democrats built a structural deficit by refusing to say no, then tried to paper it over with volatile taxes that swing with the stock market. Republicans’ message is refreshingly radical: slow the spending, cap budget growth, cut low-priority programs, and stop pretending taxpayers have an unlimited credit card.

Washington doesn’t need another tax. It needs Olympia to finally live within its means. Read more at the Washington Policy Center.

Bob Ferguson’s Infrastructure Plan: Borrow Now, Tax Later, Call It “Progress”

Gov. Bob Ferguson rolled out a shiny new $3 billion transportation plan and would like Washingtonians to ignore how we got here. Roads are crumbling, bridges are aging out, ferries are falling apart—and the solution, apparently, is more borrowing backed by the very tax hikes Democrats just jammed through Olympia.

Ferguson’s pitch is simple: take on new debt to fund highway paving, bridge repairs, and three new ferries over the next decade. The money comes from bonds paid off with higher gas taxes and assorted new fees lawmakers approved this year. Translation: you already paid more at the pump, now you get to pay interest on it too.

Even Ferguson admits the plan won’t fix most of the problems. Forty percent of lane miles were overdue for paving last year. Only a fraction got done. Ten percent of bridges are more than 80 years old. Some, like the Fairfax Bridge near Mount Rainier, are so far gone the state is debating whether to rebuild—or just give up entirely. But don’t worry, the governor says this is a “first step,” which is political code for we should’ve done this years ago.

The ferry system tells the same story. After betting big on electrification, the state has managed exactly one vessel conversion. New hybrid ferries won’t show up until the end of the decade, costs have exploded, and boats older than most retirees are being patched together to limp along. Now Ferguson wants to borrow even more to build additional ferries—on top of the $715 million contract already handed out.

And through it all, Democrats insist there’s no tax increase here—just “new revenue streams” paying off debt. Conveniently, this comes while Olympia is wringing its hands over budget shortfalls elsewhere, proving once again that spending is only a crisis when it’s politically inconvenient.

Republicans warn the borrowing spree is the wrong move. Democrats counter that deterioration is expensive—apparently forgetting they’ve been in charge while that deterioration piled up.

In short, Washington’s infrastructure is a mess because Democrats delayed maintenance, diverted priorities, and overspent for years. Now they want credit for partially fixing the backlog by borrowing billions more and sticking taxpayers with the tab.

Neglect first. Debt second. Victory lap third. That’s the Democratic infrastructure model. Read more at the Washington Policy.

Travis Couture Calls It What It Is: Democrats’ Spend-First, Tax-Later Budget Mess

In his op-ed, Travis Couture lays out a blunt reality Democrats keep trying to dodge: Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending and accountability problem of its own making.

Washingtonians are paying more for groceries, housing, gas, and child care, yet state government keeps spending more while delivering fewer results. Couture points out that for four straight budgets, Democrats have spent beyond what the state was forecasted to collect. The inevitable outcome? Another multibillion-dollar shortfall—entirely predictable and entirely preventable.

When that fiscal reality hits, Democrats default to their favorite solution: raise taxes. Again. Because in Olympia, overspending is never the problem—taxpayers just aren’t paying “enough” yet.

Couture’s Budget for the Working Class offers a different approach: no new taxes, real discipline, and an end to budgeting on autopilot. The plan identifies nearly $4 billion in savings over four years by cutting waste, eliminating low-priority spending, and demanding efficiencies—without cutting K-12 funding or reducing services. At the same time, it restores funding for genuinely critical needs like Medicaid services, food assistance, wildfire prevention, care for drug-exposed newborns, and law enforcement hiring.

The real shake-up is accountability. Couture’s plan forces agencies to justify every dollar through zero-based budgeting instead of rubber-stamping last year’s spending. Independent audits mean agencies no longer get to grade their own homework, and spending limits tied to inflation and population growth restore guardrails Democrats quietly abandoned.

Couture makes clear this isn’t ideological—it’s mathematical. Washington can fund core services and protect the vulnerable without hiking taxes, but only if lawmakers stop treating taxpayer money like Monopoly cash. Read more at Seattle Red.

Soft-on-Crime Policies, Hard Consequences: Seattle Woman Pays the Price

This is what “criminal justice reform” looks like in the real world.

A 75-year-old woman was standing on a downtown Seattle street corner when she was allegedly attacked from behind—unprovoked—by Fale Vaigalepa Pea, a 42-year-old man carrying a wooden stick with a metal screw sticking out of it. Witnesses say he swung it “like a baseball bat.” The result: shattered facial bones and blindness in one eye, with only a 10% chance her vision will ever return. Doctors say she may eventually lose the eye entirely.

Pea walked away after the attack.

Here’s the part Democrats never like to talk about: this wasn’t some one-off tragedy. Court records show Pea had multiple prior misdemeanor assault convictions—one in 2024, four in 2023, and another in 2020. In other words, this wasn’t unpredictable. It was preventable.

But in Seattle, repeat offenders are routinely cycled through the system with minimal consequences, all in the name of leniency, equity, and “rehabilitation.” Victims, meanwhile, are treated as collateral damage.

Prosecutors have now charged Pea with first-degree assault, and he’s being held on $1 million bail—but that’s cold comfort to a woman who lost her eyesight while simply waiting to cross the street. Her life is permanently altered. The offender, meanwhile, was given chance after chance before finally inflicting irreversible harm.

This is the direct result of policies that prioritize offenders over public safety, excuses over accountability, and ideology over reality. Democrats keep insisting these policies make communities safer. Downtown Seattle tells a very different story.

For the victim, there is no reform, no second chance, no reset. Just a lifetime of consequences—imposed not only by her attacker, but by the leaders who refused to take repeat violent crime seriously until it was far too late. Read more at King 5.

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