Donald Trump shows his utter disregard for democracy every day. We sit and watch and wait, wondering how bad it will get. Our own Washington state leaders are only playing defense. They shouldn’t. Instead, they should be putting together the revenue now – including and especially billions of dollars a year from the corporate oligarchs – to build our own genuine democracy and commonwealth.
Consider what Trump recently said: “[D]on’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare…. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. … We’re fighting wars. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection.”
Let’s take him at face value and build our own, better, and universal systems for democracy. It will cost a lot of money. We have that in our state.
In 2024, Washington state’s gross domestic product was $855 billion and our GDP per capita was $108,468, the third highest of all the states. To put this into perspective, one year of the 2025-2027 state operating budget added up to $75 billion, and included $22 billion from the federal government, of which more than half went to Apple Health and health care subsidies on the health benefit exchange.
We can expect that the Trump/Republican attacks on health care, education, higher education and basically everything else the federal government funds – with the exception of the military, ICE, and the Department of “Homeland Security” – will be subject to cuts and more cuts.
At the same time, our current funding is completely inadequate for child care, child care compensation, K-12 education, higher education, health coverage and expenses, people with developmental disabilities, and the list goes on and on.
So what do we do? Sit and wait for the next salvo from a convicted felon president? And make our own cuts that target already beleaguered children, teachers, and students? That seems to be the path taken in the first quarter of this year by Governor Ferguson and the Democratic state Legislature. We could and should do a lot better.
Let’s yardstick this, saying we need about $10 billion a year in additional funds to actually create the state that we need and want for ourselves and our children, when considering needs around K-12 education, higher education, health care, child care, foster care, safe streets, and Washington state parks.
For example, if we were to pay child care workers decently, that would cost the state $1 billion a year all by itself, according to the state’s own estimates. Providing a stand-alone state version of Apple Health for all those kicked out of the health benefit exchange and Apple Health by the Trump/GOP cuts, as well as those who currently don’t have health coverage - altogether let’s estimate 400,000 people - adds up to another $2.3 billion at Apple Health’s current annual cost of $5,800 per member.
We have the money to do this. Rep. Shaun Scott (D-43rd LD, Seattle) introduced legislation that addresses the payroll holiday that affluent employees and their employers have enjoyed for 90 years. While all middle wage and low wage workers and their employers pay 6.2% of their compensation into Social Security – for a total of 12.4% - once a worker’s compensation exceeds $184,500, that worker and his employer pay nothing above that threshold into Social Security.
Scott’s legislation would have put a 5% tax on earnings above $184,500 (note – this is much less than the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax), to be paid by the employer. We wouldn’t have to wait around for three years to get any revenue. The Legislature could put this in place immediately and realize about $4 billion a year.
Rep. Julia Reed (D-36th LD, Seattle) introduced legislation to close a loophole enjoyed only by Microsoft and Amazon, that siphons close to $1 billion a year out of higher education (triggering tuition increases and cuts in financial aid) into the pockets of these two companies, which enjoy a combined profit of $178 billion in 2025. This potential revenue could be realized immediately.
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That’s $5 billion a year… a good start. How do we achieve this? In November 2013, Boeing blackmailed the Governor and the Legislature to hold a two day special session to hand Boeing a $9 billion tax giveaway, with the understanding that aerospace jobs would remain in Washington state. How did that work out?
Governor Ferguson and the Democratic legislative leaders should stand up for our citizens, not just wait for the next blow from Trump, and certainly not do nothing at the behest of corporate oligarchs. They should call a special session now to protect Washingtonians from Trump.
The legislation is written, the revenue is estimated, the need is great and growing. Let’s stop reacting to the federal cuts with state cuts and build our own commonwealth. Now.
Amy Sundberg
