Washington Liberals

Republicans in Washington State are planning to raise your taxes.

On Monday, March 2, the State Senate, under control of the Republicans, voted to raise gas taxes by 11.7 cents over three years.

Now, in fact, I support raising the gas tax, both because it generates revenue needed for transportation and because it discourages driving, which pollutes the air and contributes to congestion and global warming.

The problem is that the Republicans are hypocritical.   The gas tax is regressive: it disproportionately affects the poor and the middle class.   Poorer people often need to drive long distances to and from work, because they can’t afford homes close to work.   For the poor and the middle class, gasoline purchases comprise a much more significant proportion of their income than for the rich.

True to form, the Republicans are willing to raise regressive taxes but not progressive taxes.

Specifically, Republicans want to raise the regressive tax to pay for transportation funding (with a big emphasis on roads), but they won’t raise the progressive capital gains tax to fund education –  despite the State Supreme Court ruling demanding that the legislature come up with an additional $5 billion to pay for K-12 education.  Gov. Inslee has proposed a capital gains tax which would help reverse the perverse regressivity of our state’s taxes. (For more about Gov. Inslee’s proposal, see images below from the Budget & Policy Center.)

Indeed, Washington State has the most regressive tax system in the nation, due to its reliance on the sales tax and due to  the absence of an income tax.

Just last week Republicans tried to invoke a 2/3 super-majority rule for raising taxes in the state Senate. But the State Supreme Court has declared such a rule unconstitutional, and Lt. Gov. Brad Owen refused to enforce the rule.

In fact, the infamous no-taxes pledge that many Republicans nationwide have signed prohibits raising income taxes but makes no mention of sales taxes or gas taxes. See The Norquist anti-tax pledge allows signers to support raising the sales tax.

Will Republicans agree to tax the rich? Or are they only OK with taxing the poor and the middle class?

See here for sources.

For background, see Democrats Challenge Republican Two Thirds Rule, Shut Down Senate Transportation Vote

The Democratic amendment, which lost on a party line vote, would have also blocked a controversial GOP amendment that takes all sales tax revenue from transportation projects out of the general fund (about $1 billion) and puts it into the transportation package. The Democrats argue that GOP provision will decimate education funding and social service funding.

…

Seattle state senator Pramila Jayapal (D-37, SE Seattle) proposed a similar amendment, which also lost along party lines. Her compromise amendment would have also gone along with the GOP change, but only after the legislature came up with a plan to fund K-12 first. Her amendment mocked the GOP “Fund Education First” mantra; the GOP has repeatedly proposed not funding any of the budget until they fund education. “It looks like funding education first is just a slogan and not something they’re actually willing to do,” Jayapal said. In addition to the sales tax change and raiding the toxics account, the transportation package includes a few other things the Democrats don’t like: Only about six percent of the money goes to multimodal projects; Sound Transit got 25 percent less taxing authority than they requested; and the legislation has a provision the Democrats have taken to calling “the poison pill.” That provision says that all the money for pedestrian, bike, and transit (that’s that six percent for multimodal) turns into roads-only money if governor Jay Inslee uses his executive authority to green light low carbon fuel standards.

Legislative language on the home stretch: One of our winter deliverables was to finalize our legal language, so here’s an annotated copy of another new draft following our legal team meeting earlier this week. The tweaks from the previous version were fairly minor, so we expect the ballot title to be similar to the ballot title that just arrived from the Secretary of State’s office for our previous version: Initiative Measure No. 1397 concerns taxes. This measure would impose a tax on certain fossil fuels and electricity generated by fossil fuels, phase in a one-percentage-point sales tax reduction, reduce certain business taxes, and increase a sales tax exemption. Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]. More generally, we are making good progress towards being able to file a final version on March 11, the first day that we can file our Initiative to the Legislature. The Secretary of State’s process takes about a month, so signature-gathering will begin in early/mid April.

Bellingham: Kyle Murphy and Ben Silesky will be in Bellingham this Friday and Saturday, so if you are located in/near Bellingham and want to connect, email Kyle@carbonwa.org to set up a time! Also check out the pretty hilarious post I wrote last year for Sightline about whether the BC carbon tax is successful because all the Canadians are filling up their tanks in Bellingham. (The short answer is No.)

Other events: I’ll be part of CityClub’s March Civic Cocktail on W March 4, and Duncan and Kyle are scheduled to be part of an event at Bainbridge Art Museum that same evening. Then the CCL Greater Pacific Northwest Regional Conference is coming up March 7-8 in Seattle; CarbonWA will be tabling and I’ll be doing my comedy-and-carbon-taxes routine on Saturday March 7. Earlier that day Ben Silesky will be at the South Sound Sustainability Expo in Tacoma. Cliff Mass will be at Seattle Town Hall on W March 11, and I’ll be at Town Hall on M March 16 for a panel on “Putting a price on Washington’s climate pollution” with KC Golden, Todd Myers, and Nicole Keenan. Further afield it looks like I’ll be in Spokane around April 15, Whidbey Island around April 22, Bremerton on April 25, and Bainbridge Island around April 29, so email me if you want to organize events or a house party while I’m in town! Details on most upcoming events are here.

Readings: Our friends at Oregon Climate have a nifty new 5-minute video, so check it out on the Oregon Climate homepage, or watch here:

Also Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center has a video describing cap-and-trade (and why he’s against it, all in less than 2 minutes!). Ian Adams of R Street has a post that should be especially thought-provoking for CCL folks: “The difference between wanting a carbon tax and getting one.” Somehow that dynamic seems to be missing from the state transportation discussion, where Senate Republicans introduced a “poison pill” that eliminates funding for transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists if Governor Inslee introduces a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) via executive order. Richard Davis also argues against the LCFS in the Seattle Times, and in doing so he has nice things to say about how the CarbonWA carbon tax would be better than an LCFS… but so far the oil companies can’t manage to translate their theoretical support for carbon pricing into practical support. Elsewhere, “Sea-Tac Airport tells of need for expansion”, and Clean Energy Canada has a report based on BC’s experience called “How to adopt a winning carbon price”; they have a handy summary in “How B.C. brought in a carbon tax without tears”.

CarbonWA is hiring! Our campaign co-directors Kyle Murphy and Duncan Clauson are assembling a team of talented organizers to help us build a strong volunteer network, get the word out about CarbonWA, and collect signatures. We are open to candidates across the state, but we are especially interested in hiring in the greater Puget Sound region. More details in this job posting (PDF), please share widely! Applications and inquires can be directed to Kyle@carbonwa.org.

As always comments welcome on the blog or via Facebook and Twitter.

Christian Appy spoke at Town Hall Seattle, Feb 16, 2015 on his latest book, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. Appy is a professor of history department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Appy was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1955. In 1964, his family moved to Westport, Connecticut where he attended public school and graduated from Staples High School in 1973. At Amherst College, Class of 1977 he majored in American Studies and wrote a prizewinning honors thesis on Appalachian coal miners. He received his Ph.D in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 1987. His dissertation received the Ralph Henry Gabriel dissertation prize from the American Studies Association. It went on to become his first book, Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. Appy taught at Harvard and MIT… His book Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides is widely assigned to college students studying the Vietnam War, due to its unique and nearly comprehensive view of those involved in the war. In April 2013, he won the UMASS Distinguished Teaching Award.

Source: wikipedia

In Road Kill: How Bertha Left the Surface-Street Option In the Dust, Ellis E. Conklin reports that “Powerful interests rallied around the tunnel and diverted then-Governor Gregoire from a less costly route.”

Specifically, “The downtown business interests, the Chamber of Commerce, Boeing, the unions, they all wanted a highway, period. Nothing was going to stop them.”

Washburn concedes that Boeing and Microsoft, in particular, pressed their case for the tunnel with Gov. Gregoire. “Certainly, they had an interest for obvious reasons, being able to move their product and their people.’ But Washburn stressed that any pressure that they, or the Chamber, exerted was no more aggressive than anyone else’s.

“No,” counters Moon [an opponent of the tunnel], “their voice was always louder than ours.”

So, these two immensely rich companies arrange to avoid paying state taxes, hire employees from overseas, and get you and me to subsidize their transportation needs.

See Corporate welfare for Microsoft,  Boeing exempt from sales tax, Tax-subsidized Boeing Co. snubs state again,  Microsoft Admits Keeping $92 Billion Offshore to Avoid Paying $29 Billion in US Taxes, Microsoft’s Staggering Tax Dodge Alone Would Fund the Entire State of Washington for Two Years .

Create the Washington State Investment Trust, Support Vital Infrastructure