VICTORY! Capital gains tax on wealthy gets approved by the Washington State Senate!

Today, for the first time ever, the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty vot­ed to levy a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to fund the state’s essen­tial ser­vices. With no votes to spare, the cham­ber gave Sen­a­tor June Robin­son’s ESSB 5096 the con­sti­tu­tion­al major­i­ty need­ed to advance the leg­is­la­tion to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the 2021 session.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5096
Cap­i­tal gains tax
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
3/6/2021

Yeas: 25; Nays: 24

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Nguyen, Nobles, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Robin­son, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Stan­ford, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Braun, Brown, Cleve­land, Dozi­er, Erick­sen, For­tu­na­to, Gildon, Hawkins, Hobbs, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, War­nick, Wil­son (Jeff), Wil­son (Lyn­da)

Three Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors joined all twen­ty-one Repub­li­cans in vot­ing no: Mark Mul­let from the 5th Dis­trict, Steve Hobbs from the 44th Dis­trict, and, sur­pris­ing­ly, Annette Cleve­land from the 49th Dis­trict. Because the par­ty has twen­ty-eight seats in the Sen­ate, it could afford to lose three mem­bers and still pass the bill.

It’s worth not­ing that the his­toric pas­sage of ESSB 5096 was made pos­si­ble by T’wina Nobles’ vic­to­ry in the 28th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict last year. Nobles, who defeat­ed Repub­li­can Steve O’Ban, deliv­ered the cru­cial twen­ty-fifth vote that the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus did not pre­vi­ous­ly have for this legislation.

Two years ago, when the pre­vi­ous Leg­is­la­ture con­vened, there were only twen­ty-three like­ly votes for a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy out of twen­ty-eight mem­bers of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus… not enough for passage.

A depend­able twen­ty-fourth vote arrived when Guy Palum­bo resigned his seat in the 1st Dis­trict and was replaced by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Stanford.

That still left the cau­cus one vote short of a major­i­ty, though.

Then, last year, the Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans trad­ed a pair of Sen­ate seats. The Repub­li­cans defeat­ed Dean Takko in the 19th while the Democ­rats knocked out O’Ban with Nobles in the 28th. While these results left the over­all bal­ance of pow­er in the Sen­ate unchanged, the whip count on cap­i­tal gains changed.

The Class of 2018 (fresh­men Mona Das, Emi­ly Ran­dall, Claire Wil­son) all sup­port­ed the bill, and we are incred­i­bly grate­ful to them. They’ll each be sub­ject­ed to Repub­li­can attacks in their dis­tricts for tak­ing this his­toric vote. But they’re coura­geous Demo­c­ra­t­ic women, and they vot­ed their val­ues and principles.

We are so proud of them.

We are also proud of our own home­town sen­a­tors, Man­ka Dhin­gra and Pat­ty Kud­er­er, who rep­re­sent Red­mond. They each deliv­ered elo­quent speech­es in favor of the bill on final pas­sage, root­ed in the log­ic of pro­gres­sive values.

As for Sen­a­tor June Robin­son, ESSB 5096’s spon­sor, she is a hero of Wash­ing­ton. She has been patient, focused, and deter­mined from Day One. Today’s vic­to­ry would not have been pos­si­ble with­out her leadership.

NPI has been build­ing sup­port for a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy for over half a decade. We have six straight years of polling data show­ing that a sig­nif­i­cant major­i­ty of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want to reduce the inequity in our tax code by levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to fund pub­lic education.

Impor­tant­ly, we have con­sis­tent­ly found that the num­ber of like­ly vot­ers who are strong­ly sup­port­ive out­num­ber those who are opposed over­all. We don’t see the same inten­si­ty of sup­port for every idea that we poll on, but we def­i­nite­ly see it when we ask Wash­ing­ton vot­ers about levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy.

Now that ESSB 5096 has passed, it goes to the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. It will get a warm wel­come upon refer­ral in the House Finance Com­mit­tee, chaired by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Noel Frame (D‑36th Dis­trict). From there, it’ll go to Appro­pri­a­tions and then House Rules, assum­ing it earns “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tions at each stage.

The House will have the option of mak­ing its own changes to the bill. If the Sen­ate signs off on those changes, the bill would go to Gov­er­nor Inslee for his sig­na­ture. Oth­er­wise, the two cham­bers would nego­ti­ate on a final ver­sion that would receive an up or down vote on each side of the Rotunda.

The math for a cap­i­tal gains tax bill has always been con­sid­ered to be more dif­fi­cult in the Sen­ate than the House, so it’s a real­ly, real­ly, real­ly big deal that ESSB 5096 passed the Sen­ate today. Kudos to all of NPI’s part­ners who worked so hard on this out­come, espe­cial­ly the mem­bers of the Bal­ance Our Tax Code Coali­tion, to which NPI belongs, and our friends at the Wash­ing­ton Bud­get & Pol­i­cy Cen­ter, who’ve helped devel­op the case for this wor­thy idea.

The work con­tin­ues, but this vic­to­ry is a real cause for celebration!