Rep. Ed Orcutt supports amendment to provide financial relief to WA drivers facing high fuel prices

thank you madam speaker rising in support of uh of this striking Amendment today the key provision of this um is regarding a rebate uh to the taxpayers and I think that rebate is a very important thing to do since the gentle lady from from the eth uh put a proposal out there uh to do this rebate I looked and worked with staff for quite some time trying to figure a way to do some sort of a credit so that we could reduce future gas tax payments and then it would automatically be a savings at the pump and the citizens would actually get that savings every time they fueled up and not have to pay that all year long and then wait for a rebate check and we found out that there are so many nuances and variations of of how somebody is buying the credits and where the money is you know is being charged and what it's against that it really wasn't a workable solution so the only real workable solution is to do a rebate and this is something that we do in other areas of uh of government um in fact we just passed a bill this year that clarified that the Working Families tax credit is a rebate of taxes presumably paid and so this is very similar to that policy that passed out of here 98 to nothing passed out of the other chamber 48 to nothing was signed by the speaker and the president of the other chamber just four days ago in fact delivered to the governor just two days ago this is a very similar principle to what is done there they're both rebates rebates of taxes that presumably have been paid paid and in fact if you look at the language in this striking Amendment may I read from the language from the Striking Amendment please proceed thank you uh Madam speaker so it says registered vehicle owner registered eligible vehicle owner means a registered owner who has paid all the fees and taxes due for an original or renewal vehicle registration for an eligible vehicle's current registration year if you look at 1895 which was the other bill that I referred to it says that you have to pay taxes and it's a rebuttable presumption that if you have lived here during the previous year and the year that you're claiming that rebate for that you are presumed to have paid those taxes thus that's a rebate this says you actually have to have paid those taxes in order to be eligible for the rebate so this is even stronger language then language in a bill that we sent out of here 98 to nothing and is now sitting on the governor's desk and Madam speaker I can tell you from my own experience I drove 23,000 miles last year at about 27 miles per gallon that's about $950 or 950 gallons and with an increased fuel cost of 50 cents a gallon that's about $475 more that I paid I've got people in my district that drive a lot more miles than I do use a lot more fuel than I do so that means they've paid a lot more than $500 last year and added expense because of the CCA and we heard the gentleman from the 19th on an earlier Amendment talk about how it's not such a good deal to pay $800 or $1,000 to get $200 back but I can tell you this I'd rather only get $200 or in this case get $150 back for paying $500 in then to get zero back after paying $500 in the amount of this rebate is going to help many of our citizens to afford that next tank of gas maybe even afford that next bag of groceries it probably won't pay for the entire next payment on their insurance bill there's a lot of things that it won't pay for but it sure is going to help and Madam speaker since we left town last year since the budget was written last year for the fouryear Outlook period our revenues are up $3.3 billion my goodness can't we give some of that back to the taxpayers who have paid it in I think we can I think we should please adopt this amendment