ESSB 5187 is the vehicle for this year’s operating budget. Its title is making 2023–2025 fiscal biennium operating appropriations. It is prime sponsored by Senator Christine Rolfes (D‑23rd District: Kitsap Peninsula), the Chair of the Ways & Means Committee, which has budget writing responsibility in the Senate.
Tag: Fiscal Responsibility
Posted inPolicy Topics
With Kevin McCarthy unable to rein in his fascist faction, Republicans in Congress are increasingly battling each other
The Grand Old Party cannot come up with any debt ceiling strategy. Its investigations are slow off the ground and looking at groundless allegations. Its House and Senate caucuses are split on whether the U.S. should continue to assist or abandon Ukraine.
Posted inPolicy Topics
VICTORY! Washington State House votes to remove death penalty and Eyman’s two-thirds nonsense from our state’s body of laws
Legislation that would formally scrub a long list of statutes no longer in effect from the Revised Code of Washington is now going to Governor Inslee after receiving a vote in both chambers.
Posted inLitigation
A roundup of reaction to the Supreme Court’s Quinn ruling upholding WA’s capital gains tax
Read what elected officials, advocacy organizations, and other think tanks are saying about the Washington State Supreme Court’s decision upholding the capital gains tax on the wealthy.
Posted inLitigation
VICTORY! Washington State Supreme Court upholds new capital gains tax on the wealthy
The Court voted 7–2 in favor of finding that Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5096 (the law that created the capital gains tax) is indeed an excise tax. The majority opinion, authored by Associate Justice Debra L. Stephens, also rejected the Quinn plaintiffs’ other arguments, affirming the law’s constitutionality.
Posted inLegislative Advocacy
Tim Eyman has quit pitching initiatives and pivoted to lobbying against progressive bills
Eyman’s initiative factory is no longer merely idle, it has completely crumbled to the ground. So, instead of pitching bad right wing stuff, Eyman is busy trying to get Republican PCOs and other right wing activists to oppose legislation they don’t like in Olympia.
Posted inLegislative Advocacy
Voters in Washington State strongly support taxing extreme wealth, NPI poll confirms
67% of 874 likely voters surveyed by Public Policy Polling in March 2023 for NPI said they supported levying a one percent wealth tax on Washington residents whose worldwide wealth exceeds a quarter billion dollars, to benefit the state’s essential public services, while only 28% were opposed and 5% were not sure.
Posted inLitigation
Whichever way the Supreme Court decides the Quinn case, it will be making public policy
Read NPI alum Patrick Stickney’s assessment of the oral argument in Quinn et al v. State of Washington et al, the right wing legal challenge to Washington State’s new capital gains tax on the wealthy.
Posted inLegislative Advocacy
VICTORY! Washington State Senate votes to remove death penalty and Eyman’s two-thirds nonsense from our state’s body of laws
Senate Bill 5087, prime sponsored by Senator Jamie Pedersen (D‑43rd District: Seattle) and requested by Attorney General Bob Ferguson, would formally scrub a long list of statutes no longer in effect from the Revised Code of Washington.
Posted inLitigation
Impressions from today’s oral arguments in right wing’s capital gains tax legal challenge
Here’s what it was like to be in the courtroom for oral arguments in Quinn et al v. State of Washington et al, the right wing legal challenge to the constitutionality of our recently enacted capital gains tax on the wealthy.
Posted inLegislative Advocacy
McCarthy’s uneasy majority tries to give rich tax cheats a gift as its first legislative act
“Only this extreme Republican majority would use its first bill of the 118th Congress to embolden tax cheats and cut services for working Americans: For decades, Republicans have been cutting necessary resources from the IRS,” Representative Suzan DelBene, D‑Washington, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.
Posted inLitigation
Washington State Supreme Court rules capital gains tax on wealthy can be collected for now
The ruling, requested by Attorney General Bob Ferguson, frees the Department of Revenue (DOR) to proceed with collecting the new capital gains tax, which is a crucial new funding source for education, preschool, and early learning.
Posted inOur Environment
Inflation Reduction Act passes the U.S. House, heads to President Joe Biden’s desk
The historic climate and health focused Inflation Reduction Act is one of the most consequential environmental bills ever enacted by Congress. It now heads to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
Posted inLegislative Advocacy
A win for America! U.S. Senate passes climate and health focused Inflation Reduction Act
“Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests, voting to lower the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance, and everyday energy costs and reduce the deficit, while making the wealthiest corporations finally pay their fair share,” said President Joe Biden in a special statement.