John Braun commentary: In Olympia, the response is ‘more taxes’ when it should be ‘less spending’
Friday, February 20, 2026
It didn’t take long for majority Democrats in our state Legislature to jump off the affordability bandwagon.
Just five days before this year’s session convened, my counterpart on the Democrat side of the Senate said affordability would be a top-three priority, along with addressing the self-inflicted $1.5 billion shortfall in the state operating budget.
Fast-forward to day 39 of the session. The agenda for our Senate Ways and Means Committee included votes on seven of the Democrats’ tax and fee bills — which combined would have a total annual cost of nearly $950 million within a couple of years.
No one came right out and said it, but apparently Democrats are looking at these taxes as part of their solution to the budget shortfall. So much for the priority on affordability.
Two of the bills were pulled from the agenda after the meeting began. The remaining five, which were passed by Democrats on the committee, include a big increase in the state tax on cigarettes and vapes.
While I don’t smoke, tobacco is a legal product — and even though the cigarette tax here is already very high, and the most regressive tax our state has, Senate Bill 6129 would push the tax per pack to $5, from the current $3, making it second highest in the nation. Remember that the next time Democrats complain that Washington’s tax code is regressive.
The Democrat budget-committee members also approved tax bills that would make health-insurance premiums more expensive; raise the costs of doing business for pharmacies, many of which are struggling as it is, especially in rural areas; and increase taxes related to data centers, affecting our state’s competitiveness and ability to create new jobs.
They still have time to approve the other two tax bills before the new budget is passed, prior to the March 12 close of the session. The more damaging bill of the two is Senate Bill 6173, which would eventually take $800 million annually from our economy by taxing employers for health care — even though most in our state already provide their workers with coverage.
This is exactly why Republicans have been skeptical about whether our majority colleagues truly know what “affordability” means.
Or, as our assistant budget leader Sen. Nikki Torres put it, you can’t say you’re fighting for affordability while consistently supporting policies that make it more expensive to live and do business here.
The committee’s pro-tax votes look even worse in light of the unexpectedly good news we had received from the state’s chief economist just a few days earlier.
The first-quarter revenue forecast indicates the state will bring in $827 million more than anticipated during the current budget cycle. It also predicts revenue will grow at nearly 7% from this two-year budget cycle to the next.
That rate of growth should be more than enough. If legislators would simply keep their spending aligned with what the tax code is already generating, and focus on addressing the priorities we all share, Washington taxpayers would be much better off.
Senate Republicans followed those principles in developing the new budget we offered in 2025. The shortfall legislators faced was larger then, at approximately $7 billion over four years.
Because we view tax increases as a last resort, our proposal focused on protecting core services and forgoing unnecessary future spending. Although it erased the shortfall without a single tax hike, Democrats rejected the Senate Republican budget both times they were forced to vote on it last year.
Compare our approach to how Democrats respond to budget shortfalls. They always seem to be about more taxes, rather than less spending. They also seem to be uninterested in finding and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the programs that are already being funded.
In 2025 their tax-first preference produced the largest package of tax increases our state has ever seen, at nearly $12.3 billion over four years. As the Senate budget-committee vote shows, Democrats are responding to this second consecutive shortfall the same way, even though it’s evident that higher taxes are a major enemy of affordability.
If the income-tax bill passed by the Senate becomes law, it will take over as the largest tax increase in state history, at an estimated cost of $14 billion over four years.
That fact alone should warrant a public vote on the tax, but as Republicans keep pointing out, the sponsors have resisted by including the anti-referendum “necessity clause” in the tax bill. I suspect they know the voters are not fooled by the deceptive “tax on millionaires” label and are aware of how easily the income threshold could be lowered to make it a tax on more Washingtonians.
It’s also likely Washington workers would take offense at something said during the debate preceding the Feb. 16 vote to pass the income-tax bill.
In so many words, it was suggested our state constitution is wrong when it declares income to be a form of "property” — as in, the dollars you earn aren’t really owned by you, so the constitutional limits on taxing property shouldn’t apply.
This is the mindset Republicans are up against in Olympia. Apparently, it doesn’t matter that state Supreme Court justices have relied on the crystal-clear language in Washington’s constitution when rejecting other income-tax legislation over the past 90-plus years.
While Democrats profess to care about affordability, they don’t seem to see the value in spending less so people can keep more of their money. Their support of an income tax and approach to filling the budget gap shows their first instinct is to put more tax dollars in government hands.
That is not how our state does better.
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Sen. John Braun of Centralia serves the 20th Legislative District, which spans parts of four counties from Yelm to Vancouver. He became Senate Republican leader in 2020.