Issues
Creating Jobs, Getting the Economy Back on Track
Families need good jobs and young people need opportunity. I want to kick-start Washington’s economy and job-engine by providing relief to small businesses and keeping taxes low.
Our state’s economy is suffering from a recession not seen since the great depression. The private sector has lost more than 170,000 jobs since the beginning of 2008. Unemployment is over 9%. Washington families and small businesses are struggling. Despite this, Olympia has chosen to increase spending and taxes. In its most recent session, Olympia burdened families and small businesses with a whopping $800 million package of new taxes, making it the largest tax increase in the state’s history.
Creating a Sustainable Budget
This year Olympia was forced to deal with a $2.8 Billion budget deficit. That was no accident. Olympia has been failing to make the hard decisions and that had lead to our current fiscal nightmare. And even though they raised taxes, those will not cover the future anticipated shortfalls. Something needs to be done now to stop this.
Olympia has been growing the budget, increasing the number of state employees and escalating spending beyond reason. Olympia lacks fiscal responsibility or regard for our future. State pensions are underfunded, budgets have been balanced with one-time federal stimulus money and educational spending has been cut.
We need to get back to basics and clearly define what government’s role and priorities are. This will require hard decisions and real leadership, but with the right leadership, I’m confident we can get the state back on track to fiscal sanity and responsibility. It’s time to reform the way our government builds its budgets and plans its spending.
Education
We need to take a “No Excuses” approach to providing a world-class education for each of our children. Those teachers that truly change children’s lives need to be celebrated and rewarded. We need to ensure that we can attract and retain the best and the brightest to the teaching profession. Every child deserves a great education, and our state constitution makes it “the paramount duty of the state” to do so.
Olympia has suspended voter approved initiatives that fund lower class sizes and teacher retention and pay, which means fewer teachers and larger class sizes. Olympia has cut $1.5 billion in funding for education, including $800 million from our K-12 public schools.
Respecting the Will of the People
Our state constitution provides for the people to directly influence lawmaking via the initiative process. Voter approved initiatives should be respected and not ignored by Olympia.
Unfortunately, Olympia has disregarded the voters, and gutted voter-approved initiatives. The Legislature threw out initiatives that funded schools and protected taxpayers: I-960 was suspended so taxes could be raised. I-728 was suspended so school funding could be cut. I-732 was suspended and teachers got paid less.
As your State Senator, I will never vote to override the people’s will.
