Here in the majes­tic Pacif­ic North­west, in the great State of Wash­ing­ton, we have much to be thank­ful for and proud of. We are a nation­al leader advanc­ing wor­thy ideas like envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship, fair pay, and sen­si­ble gun safe­ty laws.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s one area where we rank dead last among all fifty states, and that is our means of financ­ing the essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices we rely on every day. We have the most upside down, regres­sive tax code in the coun­try. Those with the least pay the most as a per­cent­age of their income, while those with the most pay the least. It’s an unjust, archa­ic, and inde­fen­si­ble sys­tem, but we’ve been stuck with it because our Leg­is­la­ture keeps squan­der­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to reform it.

Whether this sad state of affairs con­tin­ues to per­sist will depend in part on what hap­pens this year in Wash­ing­ton’s 45th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, where vot­ers must choose a new state sen­a­tor to serve through the end of 2018.

If vot­ers elect Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Man­ka Dhin­gra, the Sen­ate will flip Demo­c­ra­t­ic and gain new lead­er­ship open to pur­su­ing pro­gres­sive tax reform.

On the oth­er hand, if vot­ers elect Repub­li­can Jiny­oung Englund, the Sen­ate will remain con­trolled by reform-averse Repub­li­cans until at least 2019.

(Dhin­gra trounced Englund in last mon­th’s pre­lim­i­nary Top Two elec­tion by over ten points, but Repub­li­cans aren’t con­ced­ing the race.)

At a debate on Mon­day evening, host­ed by the League of Women Vot­ers of Seat­tle-King Coun­ty, Dhin­gra and Englund were asked what their idea of a fair and func­tion­al tax sys­tem for Wash­ing­ton State is. (Like NPI, the League strong­ly believes reforms are need­ed to make our tax code fair­er and more sta­ble.)

The can­di­dates gave sharply dif­fer­ent answers.

Speak­ing first, Dhin­gra cor­rect­ly described Wash­ing­ton’s tax sys­tem as the most regres­sive in the coun­try, and sug­gest­ed that the first action the Leg­is­la­ture should take to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion ought to be a review of the state’s many cor­po­rate tax exemp­tions. Peo­ple must be pri­or­i­tized, she said.

Englund went sec­ond and spent most of her time denounc­ing the idea of a state income tax, which Repub­li­cans have been using for years as a bogey­man in an attempt to scare vot­ers away from Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates, regard­less of whether those can­di­dates actu­al­ly favor levy­ing a state income tax or not.

But Englund did­n’t stop there. She made it clear she does­n’t even think there’s a prob­lem that needs solv­ing at all, telling the audi­ence, “I respect­ful­ly dis­agree that we have a regres­sive tax sys­tem in our state.”

Here’s the ques­tion and the entire answers giv­en by both can­di­dates for context:

MODERATOR NATALIE BRAND: What is your idea of a fair and func­tion­al tax and rev­enue sys­tem for the State of Washington?

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE MANKA DHINGRA: So we have the most regres­sive tax sys­tem in the coun­try. The most! And that has to change. And the way we begin to start address­ing this is by mak­ing sure we are rolling back the prop­er­ty tax increase that was imposed on us this year. And do that by real­ly tak­ing a look at the over nine hun­dred cor­po­rate tax exemp­tions that we have on the books.

It is time that we pri­or­i­tize peo­ple, small busi­ness­es, and our chil­dren. We have to make sure that we are grow­ing a healthy mid­dle class — because that is the back­bone of a great economy.

And that’s where you start. But you have to make sure that you are pri­or­i­tiz­ing peo­ple above every­thing else.

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: So to call… to call our tax sys­tem regres­sive is a par­ty talk­ing point.

And… and here’s the thing. If we want to talk about whether or not that’s true… if any­one who’s lived here for a long time knows that in Wash­ing­ton State, you know, a state income tax was pro­posed nine times. Nine times it was vot­ed down, most recent­ly in 2010 (I‑1098). Over 60% of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans vot­ed it down. That means peo­ple who are mid­dle income, peo­ple who are low income…  you know, peo­ple like my fam­i­ly, who are blue col­lar work­ing class, we vot­ed against it. Because we don’t see it as a pro­gres­sive tax.

We see Wash­ing­ton State being one out of sev­en states in the coun­try hav­ing no state income tax… . that’s actu­al­ly a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. CNBC recent­ly said that Wash­ing­ton State is one of the best to do busi­ness because we don’t have a state income tax.

And if we real­ly want to have an hon­est and… and… seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion about tax reform, then what we need to do is we need to do a deep dive into our state spending.

And that’s not going to hap­pen under one par­ty gov­ern­ment. It is only when each par­ty are equals at the nego­ti­at­ing table, so that nei­ther par­ty can cater to their spe­cial inter­ests, and now both must at some lev­el com­pro­mise in order to come up with solu­tions for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton, that we’re actu­al­ly gonna get real tax reform in our state.

It’s only when we have a bal­ance of pow­er that busi­ness­es, that com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, that peo­ple of all eco­nom­ic class lev­els are equal­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the table that we’re gonna get actu­al, real tax reform for our state. And so, I, you know, I… I respect­ful­ly dis­agree that we have a regres­sive tax sys­tem in our state. Because I am for peo­ple, and not for par­ties. And the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State have been very clear in say­ing we do not want a state income tax. So you guys, hope­ful­ly, you know, one of us as leg­is­la­tors… Deal with it. Fig­ure out a way to make the bud­get work with­out one.

I respect­ful­ly sub­mit that Jiny­oung Englund failed to answer the League’s ques­tion and demon­strat­ed a lack of knowl­edge about our tax code. In the inter­est of cor­rect­ing the record, I’m going to debunk her com­ments, line by line.

Let’s get started.

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: So to call… to call our tax sys­tem regres­sive is a par­ty talk­ing point.

Con­sid­er­ing that Jiny­oung Englund’s cam­paign con­sists almost exclu­sive­ly of par­ty talk­ing points, this seemed to me to be a lame attempt at an open­ing rejoinder.

In call­ing Wash­ing­ton State’s tax code regres­sive, Man­ka Dhin­gra was stat­ing a fact… a well doc­u­ment­ed fact sup­port­ed by data. In Wash­ing­ton State, the peo­ple with the most pay the least, and the peo­ple with the least pay the most. That, in a nut­shell, is regres­sive tax­a­tion. Here is a longer def­i­n­i­tion from Wikipedia:

A regres­sive tax is a tax imposed in such a man­ner that the tax rate decreas­es as the amount sub­ject to tax­a­tion increas­es.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} “Regres­sive” describes a dis­tri­b­u­tion effect on income or expen­di­ture, refer­ring to the way the rate pro­gress­es from high to low, so that the aver­age tax rate exceeds the mar­gin­al tax rate.^[6][7] In terms of indi­vid­ual income and wealth, a regres­sive tax impos­es a greater bur­den (rel­a­tive to resources) on the poor than on the rich: there is an inverse rela­tion­ship between the tax rate and the tax­pay­er’s abil­i­ty to pay, as mea­sured by assets, con­sump­tion, or income.

Here is a chart illus­trat­ing how regres­sive tax­es are in Washington:

The less you make, the more in tax­es you pay as a per­cent­age of your income. If you make less than $21,000, you pay near­ly 17% of your income in tax­es. But if you make over $507,000, you only pay 2.4% of your income in taxes.

That’s not all. Our upside down tax code dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impacts peo­ple of col­or, as they are more like­ly to be in that low­est income brack­et than whites.

Here is a table from the Insti­tute on Tax­a­tion and Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy (ITEP) show­ing that Wash­ing­ton has the most regres­sive tax code in the coun­try com­pared to the oth­er forty-nine states in the Union. We even beat out Flori­da and Texas.

This is from the fifth edi­tion of Who Pays?, a report ITEP updates every few years. Wash­ing­ton has con­sis­tent­ly been ranked last among all the states in this report. Most of the “Ter­ri­ble Ten” are red states that tend to vote Republican.

It is true that Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and elect­ed offi­cials talk a lot more about tax fair­ness than Repub­li­cans do. That’s because they’ve seen the data and favor tak­ing cor­rec­tive action to improve our state’s fis­cal health, where­as Repub­li­cans like Jiny­oung Lee Englund unfor­tu­nate­ly seem to have no interest.

I have heard more than one Repub­li­can say on the floor of the Leg­is­la­ture that we should not pur­sue pro­gres­sive tax reform because it would be “pun­ish­ing suc­cess”. Wrong! That is not what pro­gres­sive tax reform is about.

In Amer­i­ca, we pool our resources to get things done. It is the Amer­i­can way. We’ve been doing it for cen­turies. It is patri­ot­ic to be a taxpayer.

Tax­es are invest­ments. No busi­nessper­son suc­ceeds in this state or coun­try on their own. Every pri­vate busi­ness in this state depends on pub­lic infra­struc­ture paid for by pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of Wash­ing­ton tax­pay­ers. Every per­son who does well in busi­ness there­fore has an oblig­a­tion to pay it for­ward and enable future gen­er­a­tions of work­ers and busi­ness own­ers to be successful.

Not every­one has the same means in our soci­ety. There is a huge dis­par­i­ty when it comes to wealth. That’s why we need a tax code based on abil­i­ty to pay.

Let’s move on. Back to Jinyoung:

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: Any­one who’s lived here for a long time knows that in Wash­ing­ton State, you know, a state income tax was pro­posed nine times. Nine times it was vot­ed down, most recent­ly in 2010 (I‑1098). Over 60% of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans vot­ed it down.

This is not an accu­rate sum­ma­ry of efforts to levy an income tax in Washington.

Any­one who’s lived here for a long time and has both­ered to study the elec­toral his­to­ry of the state knows that the his­to­ry of the move­ment to cre­ate a state income tax goes all the way back to the 1932 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. That year, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed to levy an income tax. An aston­ish­ing 70% of vot­ers gave their bless­ing to Ini­tia­tive 29, with only 30% opposed.

I‑29 might still be the law of the land today were it not for the state Supreme Court, which ruled it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in a goofy deci­sion many con­tem­po­rary con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars feel was not well reasoned.

Sub­se­quent attempts to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion to over­turn that rul­ing (in 1934, 1936, 1938, 1942, 1944, 1970, and 1973) were unsuc­cess­ful, by vary­ing mar­gins. In each case, the Leg­is­la­ture was able to agree by a two-thirds vote of each house on a desired amend­ment, but the amend­ments were reject­ed by the people.

More recent­ly, as Englund men­tioned, Bill Gates, Sr. spear­head­ed a statewide ini­tia­tive to levy an income tax on the wealthy, which was eas­i­ly defeated.

I‑1098 did pass in some places with­in Wash­ing­ton. Seat­tle was the largest juris­dic­tion in the state to sup­port the ini­tia­tive, but it was­n’t the only one, con­trary to what Repub­li­cans have implied with their Seat­tle-bash­ing rhetoric. For instance, San Juan Coun­ty and Port Townsend also vot­ed in favor of I‑1098.

While it is true that no statewide vote in sup­port of an income tax has suc­ceed­ed since 1932, that does­n’t mean Wash­ing­to­ni­ans like the tax code that we have.

There is wide­spread enthu­si­asm for reforms that would make it fair­er and bring in need­ed rev­enue for our pub­lic schools and essen­tial pub­lic services.

In a sur­vey con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI last June, 60% of respon­dents said they agreed with the state­ment that Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools are under­fund­ed, and we need to raise rev­enue to ful­ly fund them. 57% of respon­dents said they sup­port­ed a cap­i­tal gains tax as a way to do that.

Vot­ers are more like­ly to enter­tain the idea of a state income tax in the future if the Leg­is­la­ture demon­strates it’s capa­ble of tak­ing basic steps to reform our tax code. Right now, peo­ple are skep­ti­cal — jus­ti­fi­ably — that any­thing is going to change, because there has been a his­to­ry of inac­tion. Elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives can earn vot­ers’ trust start­ing in 2018 by deliv­er­ing results instead of platitudes.

Levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax is one wor­thy tax reform idea that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans like, but there are oth­er ideas the Leg­is­la­ture can pur­sue. For example:

• We ought to begin cre­at­ing a tax expen­di­ture bud­get and sun­set­ting tax exemp­tions that do not serve the pub­lic interest.
• Cor­po­ra­tions that fail to deliv­er on their job cre­ation promis­es or move jobs out of our state should auto­mat­i­cal­ly for­feit part or all of the tax breaks they pre­vi­ous­ly received. (This is an idea that’s wild­ly pop­u­lar across the state.)
• We should reform prop­er­ty tax­es by repeal­ing Tim Eyman’s arbi­trary cap and rely­ing on more pro­gres­sive strate­gies for pro­tect­ing home­own­ers, renters, and small busi­ness own­ers — strate­gies like a home­stead exemp­tion.

Back to Jinyoung:

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: We see Wash­ing­ton State being one out of sev­en states in the coun­try hav­ing no state income tax… . that’s actu­al­ly a com­pet­i­tive advantage.

CNBC recent­ly said that Wash­ing­ton State is one of the best to do busi­ness because we don’t have a state income tax.

Actu­al­ly, CNBC ranked Wash­ing­ton as the best state in the coun­try for busi­ness in 2017, not one of the best. We’re No. 1! And that’s not because we lack an income tax. It’s because despite hav­ing the coun­try’s most regres­sive tax code, we scored well in a lot of areas that were impor­tant to CNBC’s method­ol­o­gy this year.

Wash­ing­ton’s fore­most com­pet­i­tive advan­tage isn’t its present lack of an income tax… it’s our work­force. Yes, our work­force! That was the cat­e­go­ry CNBC gave the most weight to for 2017. Why? Well, I’ll let them explain:

Our aim is to grade the states based on the qual­i­ties they deem most impor­tant in attract­ing busi­ness. To do that, we assign a weight to each of our 10 cat­e­gories by ana­lyz­ing every state’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. The more the states cite a par­tic­u­lar cat­e­go­ry as a sell­ing point, the more weight that cat­e­go­ry car­ries. For exam­ple, if more states are talk­ing about their work­force, the Work­force cat­e­go­ry car­ries more pos­si­ble points.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, CNBC cit­ed Wash­ing­ton’s work­force as the state’s major com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. Here are the first five para­graphs of their commentary:

The study com­men­tary does note lat­er on that Wash­ing­ton has no income tax, but it’s men­tioned only in pass­ing. In the very same pas­sage, CNBC observes Wash­ing­ton State has a high cost of liv­ing. It must be not­ed that part of that high cost of liv­ing — for mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies, at least — are regres­sive tax­es like the sales tax and the busi­ness and occu­pa­tion tax, which state and local gov­ern­ments are heav­i­ly reliant on because we do not levy an income tax.

Back to Jinyoung:

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: And if we real­ly want to have an hon­est and… and… seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion about tax reform, then what we need to do is we need to do a deep dive into our state spending.

And that’s not going to hap­pen under one par­ty government.

We have now had divid­ed gov­ern­ment in our state­house for near­ly five years. There has been ample oppor­tu­ni­ties for the Leg­is­la­ture to do a “deep dive” into appro­pri­a­tions. There have been ample oppor­tu­ni­ties not only to have con­ver­sa­tions about tax reform, but to fol­low up with actions.

But that is not what we’ve seen.

Instead, the Leg­is­la­ture has strug­gled just to keep state gov­ern­ment open, unveil­ing error-rid­den bud­gets at the eleventh hour that have not been prop­er­ly scru­ti­nized. Three times in four years we’ve gone to the brink of a state gov­ern­ment shut­down (2013, 2015, 2017). That did not hap­pen in the years lead­ing up to 2013 when Democ­rats were run­ning both chambers.

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: It is only when each par­ty are equals at the nego­ti­at­ing table, so that nei­ther par­ty can cater to their spe­cial inter­ests, and now both must at some lev­el com­pro­mise in order to come up with solu­tions for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton, that we’re actu­al­ly gonna get real tax reform in our state.

One more time: Divid­ed gov­ern­ment has not been a recipe for long over­due rev­enue reform or for bud­gets that lack the impri­matur of “spe­cial interests”.

Repub­li­cans showed a com­plete lack of inter­est in bar­gain­ing in good faith at the nego­ti­at­ing table this year. Instead, they tried over and over again to coerce Gov­er­nor Inslee and House Democ­rats into betray­ing their val­ues through hostage-tak­ing tac­tics. This is why we don’t have a cap­i­tal budget.

The last five years are a painful reminder that divid­ed gov­ern­ment rarely pro­duces much of any­thing besides grid­lock and dys­func­tion.

There have been some excep­tions: the Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton trans­porta­tion pack­age, the water­shed paid fam­i­ly leave leg­is­la­tion, a new safe dri­ving law that bars use of hand­held elec­tron­ic devices while driving.

But the Leg­is­la­ture has not been any­where near as pro­duc­tive or as effec­tive as Wash­ing­ton’s fam­i­lies and busi­ness­es need it to be.

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: It’s only when we have a bal­ance of pow­er that busi­ness­es, that com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, that peo­ple of all eco­nom­ic class lev­els are equal­ly rep­re­sent­ed at the table that we’re gonna get actu­al, real tax reform for our state.

I have a bridge I’m ready to sell to any­one who believes this statement.

I got involved in pol­i­tics over fif­teen years ago. I’ve been cham­pi­oning tax reform pret­ty much that entire time, only to watch the Leg­is­la­ture fail to act repeat­ed­ly. In fact, the Leg­is­la­ture has made things worse by rein­stat­ing destruc­tive Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives struck down by the courts and pass­ing bud­gets that rely on fund trans­fers and account­ing gim­micks to make the books balance.

The most coun­ter­pro­duc­tive years have been the ones when Repub­li­cans had con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. When Democ­rats held both cham­bers, we at least got a few minor reforms — like sim­ple major­i­ty for school levies.

I remem­ber when the Wash­ing­ton State Tax Struc­ture Study came out. This was at a time when Repub­li­cans had just won a nar­row Sen­ate majority.

Com­mis­sioned by the Leg­is­la­ture, it offered a series of well-thought out rec­om­men­da­tions for the Leg­is­la­ture on how to improve the state’s fis­cal health.

Dino Rossi (Jiny­oung’s men­tor and the appoint­ed suc­ces­sor of Andy Hill) respond­ed to the com­mis­sion’s find­ings by dis­miss­ing its report. It was evi­dent he just did­n’t care about doing any­thing to make our tax code more pro­gres­sive. And Rossi’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­ter­parts took note of that. Here’s a snip­pet from the Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ report about the com­ple­tion of the study:

Lisa Brown, the out­go­ing Sen­ate bud­get chair­woman, and House Finance Chair­man Jeff Gom­bosky, D‑Spokane, will hold a joint hear­ing on Dec. 3, but nei­ther expects a major tax over­haul in the 2003 ses­sion. “With Repub­li­cans run­ning the Sen­ate, it’s not going to hap­pen,” Gom­bosky says.

Jeff Gom­bosky has long since retired. But what he said back in 2002 holds true today. As long as Repub­li­cans are run­ning the Sen­ate, tax reform is not going to hap­pen. They have no inter­est in mak­ing our tax code fairer.

Remem­ber, many Repub­li­cans don’t even think we have a problem:

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: And so, I, you know, I… I respect­ful­ly dis­agree that we have a regres­sive tax sys­tem in our state.

These com­ments don’t change the fact that we have a tax code that oblig­es those with the least to pay the most and those with the most to pay the least. That’s immoral and unjust. Jiny­oung, your oppo­nent under­stands this. It’s tru­ly dis­ap­point­ing that this isn’t an area where you and she have com­mon ground.

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: Because I am for peo­ple, and not for parties.

Rii­i­i­ight. That’s why, as a for­mer Repub­li­can Par­ty oper­a­tive, you’re now run­ning for the state Leg­is­la­ture as a Repub­li­can, and have accept­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from mul­ti­ple lev­els of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Because you are for peo­ple, not for par­ties. The Repub­li­cans recruit­ed you to move into this dis­trict and run as their hand­picked recruit for Sen­ate, have sup­plied you with huge sums of mon­ey to ensure you’re com­pet­i­tive in your fundrais­ing, and have devised your cam­paign strat­e­gy and talk­ing points. But it’s not like you owe them anything…

… also, if you are sin­cere in your belief that one par­ty rule is a bad thing and a bal­ance of pow­er leads to bet­ter results, you could prove that by help­ing elect a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress or at least a Demo­c­ra­t­ic House in 2018. Oth­er Repub­li­cans have decid­ed to put coun­try ahead of par­ty in next year’s midterms… will you?

JINYOUNG LEE ENGLUND: And the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State have been very clear in say­ing we do not want a state income tax. So you guys, hope­ful­ly, you know, one of us as leg­is­la­tors… Deal with it. Fig­ure out a way to make the bud­get work with­out one.

We’ve already been doing that. Every bud­get in state his­to­ry has relied on means of rais­ing rev­enue oth­er than a state income tax to fund vital pub­lic ser­vices… like the noto­ri­ous­ly regres­sive and unsta­ble sales tax, which pro­vides less rev­enue to fund pub­lic ser­vices when con­sumer spend­ing declines.

The choic­es we’ve made have not been with­out their costs.

It’s cru­cial­ly impor­tant that vot­ers in the 45th — and every­where in Wash­ing­ton for that mat­ter — under­stand that our upside down tax code is the prin­ci­pal bar­ri­er hold­ing us back from meet­ing our con­sti­tu­tion­al and moral oblig­a­tions to each oth­er. Chief among these oblig­a­tions is the edu­ca­tion of our youth.

Our Con­sti­tu­tion plain­ly says it’s our para­mount duty to amply pro­vide for the edu­ca­tion of all youth resid­ing with­in Wash­ing­ton’s bor­ders. But we aren’t doing that. The Supreme Court ruled over five years ago in the McCleary case that our pub­lic schools were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly under­fund­ed, and ordered the Leg­is­la­ture to get to work rec­ti­fy­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Sad­ly, lit­tle progress has been made.

To the dis­may of the Supreme Court, the Leg­is­la­ture has strug­gled might­i­ly just try­ing to reach agree­ment on bud­gets that mod­est­ly increase edu­ca­tion fund­ing. Actu­al­ly resolv­ing the McCleary case and sat­is­fy­ing the Court’s orders would require rais­ing or recov­er­ing a sub­stan­tial amount of revenue.

That could be done with­out ask­ing most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to pay more. Wash­ing­ton is home to many wealthy peo­ple who are present­ly pay­ing a lot less of their income in tax­es than mid­dle and low­er income fam­i­lies are — as the above data shows.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and House Democ­rats have pro­posed reforms like the afore­men­tioned cap­i­tal gains excise tax on high earn­ers that would require the wealthy to step up to sup­port our schools and oth­er pub­lic services.

Repub­li­cans have shot them all down, turn­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate into a grave­yard of progress. (That’s what GOP real­ly seems to stand for these days.)

Repub­li­cans seem deter­mined to pro­tect the sta­tus quo at any cost. They have made it very clear they are not inter­est­ed in reform­ing the state’s tax code.

Along with Tim Eyman, they like it the way it is… bro­ken and regres­sive.

The sta­tus quo suits them just fine. It gives them per­pet­u­al fod­der for future cam­paigns and ide­o­log­i­cal attacks intend­ed to under­mine trust in government.

Frus­trat­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors are under­stand­ably tired of these pow­er games. Hav­ing to cut deals with Sen­ate Repub­li­cans just to keep state gov­ern­ment open every two years has been exhaust­ing and draining.

If vot­ers in the 45th fire the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans by elect­ing Man­ka Dhin­gra — who under­stands that our regres­sive tax code is hold­ing us back — it’ll be a new day in Olympia, and the Sen­ate and House will each have lead­er­ship inter­est­ed in gov­ern­ing coop­er­a­tive­ly to build an inclu­sive econ­o­my and soci­ety for Washington.