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As 2025 limps to an end, Washington Democrats are asking voters to admire their “progress.” And they’re right about one thing: it was an expensive year. Unfortunately, taxpayers are still trying to figure out what they actually paid for.
Affordability got worse, not better. Democrats expanded taxes, fees, and mandates while insisting higher prices were inevitable and totally not their fault. Dining out costs more. Everyday services are newly taxed. Bag fees went up again. Businesses were buried under more compliance rules and paperwork, all of which—shockingly—ended up passed on to consumers.
On the environmental front, Democrats delivered a perfect metaphor for the year: raising plastic bag fees while total plastic waste increased. Fewer bags, heavier plastic, more landfill waste—and higher checkout costs. It’s the Olympia special: good intentions, worse outcomes, zero accountability.
Housing policy finally reached the honesty phase. After years of hostile taxes, labor mandates, permissive crime policies, and regulatory gridlock that chased employers out of cities, Democrats quietly admitted government is the reason housing doesn’t get built. Their fix? Convert the empty commercial wreckage into apartments. Bulldoze the evidence of failure, rezone it, and call it vision—without asking where the jobs are supposed to go.
Homelessness remained the most expensive failure of all. Billions more were spent in 2025 on homelessness programs, consultants, and nonprofit contracts, with little to show beyond more tents, more open-air drug use, and more human suffering. Accountability stayed taboo. Results were optional. If something didn’t work, the answer was never reform—it was more money and fewer questions.
Public safety followed the same script. Ideological experiments lingered, repeat offenders cycled freely, and only after years of public pressure did Democrats grudgingly tighten DUI laws they once softened. Communities paid the price while Olympia debated intentions.
And looming over everything is spending. Democrats blew through surplus money like it was permanent, locked in new ongoing programs, and now face looming budget gaps they’ll pretend require—what else—new taxes.
Which brings us to the grand finale: Bob Ferguson’s shiny new “millionaire tax.” Marketed as a painless fix for the mess Democrats created, it’s really just a repackaged income tax despite our constitution explicitly forbiding one. Rather than reform spending or admit failure, Democrats are daring the courts to block it—hoping voters won’t notice that “tax the rich” is their answer to every self-inflicted problem.
All of this happened under one-party rule, with Republicans sidelined and warnings dismissed as partisan noise.
So as the clock strikes midnight, Democrats will toast another year of “bold leadership.” Everyone else gets the bill, the bureaucracy, the tents, the higher prices—and now an unconstitutional tax proposal bound for a court appearance.
Here’s to 2026. May it bring fewer slogans, fewer mandates, and at least a passing interest in results.
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