House and Senate Republican media availability | Feb. 25, 2025

good morning everyone I'm John handy communications director for the house Republican caucus and I'd like to welcome you to our Republican media avilability with us today from the house Republican caucus we have house Republican Deputy leader Chris Corey of the 15th district and uh joining us soon will be uh representative Andrew barcus House Republican Transportation lead from the second district and uh from the Senate Republican caucus we have Senate Republican leader John Brun the 20th district and Senator Chris gildon Senate Republican budget lead from the 25th district and with that I will turn it over to representative Corey for some opening remarks well good morning everyone thank you John um happy day 44 of our legislative session we only have 61 days left not that we are all eagerly counting down uh last Friday we had our uh policy cut off and we had a number of bills packed also a number of bills not make it through um that I think most washingtonians would be happy to see that they stopped um the one I would highlight in particular is the hospital mergers bill which would have had a particular impact on uh rural washingtonians across the state both on the east and west side um so we're happy to see that go through still a number of proposals that uh we actively working on that we're concerned about especially around um new taxes across the board whether there property tax increases bno tax increases real estate tax increases um and so on and so forth so um this week is a fiscal week so we've got myself and a number of others in our budget committees looking at um bills that are going to potentially have an impact both on the tax and spin side um so happy to take your questions I'm going to turn it over to um Senator brno well good morning thank you for being here week seven of the 2025 session uh Senate Republicans remain focused on the same things we've worked on for several years now public safety good news there is the uh Bill uh for grants for law enforcement uh additional law enforcement for local municipalities continues to move forward we feel optimistic about that um we're working on affordability I think the biggest issue there is what are we going to do with the overspending situation we have with our state's operating budget and how are we going to find ways uh to push back on these enormous tax increases our colleagues on the other side of the I are proposing so I'm glad to have uh Senator Chris gildon our budget lead on the call with me today to talk about that and then on education I think there's some good news The Chronic absenteeism bill has continued to move forward that's that's a step in the right direction we got a little Bill to add uh CTE credits for sixth graders which I think is a step in the right direction unfortunately uh in the other direction we still have to deal with this uh bill that would remove parents' rights that you know passed out of the Senate uh a couple weeks ago and is being considered in the house this is a bad Bill that divides children from their parents and and undermines the relationship between parents and school districts uh does nothing to help get our K12 public education system back on the right track so work to do there uh but we're going to we're going to stay focused on these items you know it's fiscal week as uh representative Corey said uh there's some good bills and some bad bills in ways and means we re heard some of each uh last night I think the bad one I'd highlight is the initiative killer Bill uh that really takes a jab at the people's constitutional right to enter into into inter government and into democracy it's just a bad Bill uh with no real purpose other than to discourage the people of our state from participating in the initiative process and that's wrong uh but there's also some good bills um and I'm happy to talk about those I'm going to stop there because I'm sure got a good crowd we're going have lots of questions I don't want to run out of time thank you all right with that we will go to uh Simone and mclatchy hi sorry about that my audio was lagging so good morning um yesterday house Democrats released uh what a no Revenue budget would mean for the state and I highlighted Some Cuts that they said would be devastating including to healthcare Human Services and early learning higher education Etc what do you make of that website were you able to peruse the website that house Democrats launched could you just offer your response to that yeah we spent we spent some time uh looking over that yesterday um I think this is a website that highlights just how badly they've mismanaged our state's finances um for context here I started in the legislature in 2019 in the last three bienniums we have overspent our revenues by 1.9 billion 2.6 billion and 4.1 billion in the last six years that's almost $9 billion doar alone in spending more than we took in and so now they're claiming we have this big deficit it's really just a masquerade of their Reckless spending and financial irresponsibility there's no other way to put it we've been warning them for years that you cannot continue to spend more money than you take in you cannot spend more you know one-time monies a great example of that is when they rid $4 billion out of our state's rainy day savings account and spend it on ongoing costs this is the natural result of that um you know fiscal irresponsibility has consequences and you're yielding this result and now what what are they doing they're threatening people well if you don't do this we're going to have all these uh drastic cuts that are going to impact your life it's ridiculous what they should be doing is saying we still have Revenue growth which we do we're just not going to do a bunch of new spending and there's areas where we can slow our spending delay stuff not implement it um that would end up having um a huge take a huge bite out of the supposed deficit but um all in all it's a website that I'm surprised they put up because it just highlights how they cannot seem to manage their financial status of Washington state did you have follow-up smone no thank you all right next we'll go to Drew from King five good morning uh sticking with the budget I know uh several of you have been meeting somewhat regularly with uh the new governor and uh he at some point this week it looks like Thursday we'll be uh revealing what some of uh these 6% cuts that he has asked for might look like have you had a chance to look at that uh he he continues to say that taxes would be his last resort uh I know that's probably the the same uh feeling amongst you gentlemen um but uh do you think that's going to hold after after we start to see what some of these cuts are going to look like well I haven't seen them yet I think uh senator gildon may be able to talk in more detail but I I don't think they're released publicly um but I I I I appreciate the fact that he's doing this this is a a proper move in my view for the governor uh is to go back and look at the agencies and look where there's opportunity for savings that that make sense in our current context savings that that make our state more efficient but preserve essential services for our citizens so we'll see what he releases on uh on Thursday I think it'll be a natural step in the discussion I remain very optimistic that this is a solvable problem um that that we yeah we have as representative Corey said earlier uh the State uh majorities have overspent over the last several Cycles it's put us in a bad position it's going to mean some tough decisions uh but that's the right answer because just you know taxing and and more money won't fix the underlying spending problem that we have we'll be back here a year from now with the same issues if we don't deal with how we're spending money how we're delivering Services uh to our state citizens so I think the governor's on the right track uh we'll see what he has to say on Thursday and I'll I'll Echo those comments you know and we'll see what when they make it public uh how it comes out uh I know that the governor was supposed to go to uh DC to uh go to a Governor's conference but he rather chose to stay here and work on the budget which I think is commendable I think that's the right thing to do uh I still remain very dubious that the budget shortfall the budget Gap is $12 billion uh I continue to say say that nonpartisan staff the people with political blinders uh they say that the budget shortfall is $6.7 billion so and I continue to push that and I have not seen the line by line accounting of exactly what is driving this particular budget and I don't think any of you have either and I think you should still ask for it until you get it and um good morning everybody uh just chime in on the other budget the transportation budget uh we too are anticipating um some updates from the governor um haven't seen anything yet we're still working off the previous Governor's uh template which is uh put us in about a$1 billion uh shortfall uh and the difference between the operating and the transportation is that ours is not necessarily driven by Revenue it's driven by the ever increasing costs of all of the various projects throughout our state that we've seen just massively uh increase over the last several years so we are doing a zero Revenue budget Foundation right now and U but I'm sure that there will be many conversations with regards uh to revenue um I remain and we remain uh committed to looking at every area that we can reduce our costs I think the bigger conversation has to be around moving forward when you look at any new Revenue until we solve what's causing the problem with these increased expenses on our projects which I would say and and many would be um the regulatory environment here in Olympia that's created a lot of this it can be directly Trace to that I also would say that uh uh the bill didn't get a hearing but I it has to be on the table that we continue the conversation around using the climate commitment funds uh as they are allocated for transportation there is uh close to $2 billion of Revenue that is uh directly associated with the climate commitment act that is uh earmarked for or design ated for uh specific uh usage and I think in this time that we should be uh having that talk and consideration before we talk about new Revenue uh to solve this problem within Transportation but uh the work continues yeah I think um representative BARC brings up a good point um instead of us being able to focus on what I think is a legitimate um bipartisan issue around fixing some holes in the transportation were were in this situation I also want to commend the governor for not just initial you know the gut reaction of going to new taxes um and I think the former Governor put him in a really untenable spot I mean this budget proposed was eny's budget um it was so reckless that they you know had to slap a a constitutionally dubious wealth tax on it just to get it to work um and so he you know he the governor has been largely handicapped going into this for the beginning so um I I'm going to express our caucuses commitment to uh working with him to solve these problems because we have good ideas on how to rightsize the budget um and so that's that's a nonpartisan issue let's get it done right without the knee-jerk reaction of going to new taxes to solve irresponsibility Drew did you have a followup not today thank you okay next we will go to uh jeie from KU uh good morning um I want ask now that the policy cut off is behind us then the fiscal cut off is ahead um is there any anything that stands out to you all about the cut off behind us or the one in front of us um some major wins for your caucuses or major losses um just in terms of legislation that is no longer moving forward or things that are still trucking along I'll just start real quick on the housing front um major disappointment that uh we did not Advance uh any policy or any legislation with regards to uh eviction reform or fixing the problem that has been brought forth uh by all pieces of the industry from the affordable housing groups to the private sector uh instead we focused on a lot of other policies uh to push through um to try to get at the quote unquote supply side of things uh which I think will be more detrimental to supply side namely uh the the rent control control rent stabilization bill that did come out of committee it's it's sitting there now but um we proposed quite a few bills on Supply uh only had uh you know of all the bills that we put forth on eviction reform uh working with landlord tenants and everything else um we only had seven out of come out of committee and none of them were related to those issues so uh some disappointments coming out of the housing committee for for sure um this here not getting at the problem um we're still talking supply side issues still talking about doing that it just seemed very counterintuitive with a lot of the policy that came out of housing uh which will be more detrimental to supply in the long run than actually um fixing the problem yeah I mentioned a few uh in open opening comments I'll mention a few more you know good bills that came out I talked about chronic absenteeism sixth grade the law enforcement grants but also we have some uh annual reporting for emissions that uh run by Senator Banky 5036 a good uh Senator gildon Bill that would address this issue we have with uh citizens being dually enrolled in Medicare in our state and other states it's a huge waste of money uh good example where we can find savings without without hurting services to our uh citizens um so there's some there's some good bills out there another one that reduce eliminating the cost sharing for preil and post stal care that run by Senator mol uh came out of committee so there's some some good stuff bad stuff uh it's the stuff that uh Senator represented barcus mentioned rent control continues to move ahead in the Senate sadly uh it's a bad policy that doesn't address a real problem and we did not see nearly the amount of pro housing uh uh bills come out of the housing committee that I'd hop for there are a few and hopefully uh those will be improved as we go along but this notion uh presented by the Senate majority leader that they're going to pass the the rent control Bill and in a suite of pro housing bills I'm not I'm not seeing a suite I'm seeing um uh pretty pretty um small Pickin frankly so that does not bode well for our housing situation uh other things going on the unemployment insurance for striking workers it's a bad Bill it's unfair uh to workers across the state who can't take advantage of that uh but yet would pay for it I mentioned the parental rights bill that already went off the senate floor uh there's some other Public Safety bills that are still alive although uh in ways and means I'm I'm not sure they'll survive there we'll see yeah i' definitely like to add some I mean I think the Ledger of what we're concerned about is definitely a lot larger than um what we're happy didn't pass but um there were a number of bills that have you know did not make it through that I think it's good for the state there was a a bill to 1445 that would create a single pay or healthare system that's not moving forward um there was a another minimum wage um artificial minimum wage hike that continues this assault on jobs in our state um and makes it harder and harder to not only have employees but to for employees to find good working jobs in this state uh there was a tax on Footwear and apparel um for environmental purposes I mean that's not good for people and then I think the two that um you know were of interesting note was their tax on Cal farts that died and um they're trying to erase George Washington from our state flag so um smaller issues in the grand scheme of things but um hugely insightful into um where their priorities are Jeanie did you have a followup I'm just on the housing front I wanted to ask and this might be a question for barcus but um do you have any sense of I guess what the hesitation was with some of this legislation I guess what was the main thing you were hearing about um you know why the these leg these pieces of legislation um for the supply side in your view like what what did you hear from the other side about why they didn't move forward um I just think it speaks to a broader agenda um and you know it started it it started day one with the rent stabilization that seemed to be the theme that um they wanted to talk about affordability um they they categorized many of these bills about Supply I thought it was interesting that we were running bills to uh unconstitutional by the way um to limit uh an individual owner or Corporation from owning more than 25 homes or limiting somebody from being able to own more than 200 manufactured homes or groups thereof you know these are these are directly anti- Supply trying to go out a a broader problem of affordability by doing anti- Supply bills so you can kind of see this agenda that that was there um and and really that was that was kind of the theme U the only one true Big Supply bill was my rent or excuse me my U law split bill that's been worked on for three years and uh you know it got out of uh it got out of the housing committee and then it stalled out in Appropriations because they added a big fisal on it we fought that um it was pulled off of Appropriations on last Thursday and then miraculously put back on Appropriations and passed unanimous out it's really the only big supply side bill that is moving right now uh in our opinion uh that that will actually get at the the issue by creating more you know available land uh within the confines of the GMA so um just an interesting agenda I i' I've never seen it in my nine years on the housing committee committee uh an agenda like this uh come through especially um as we have been talking about for years building upon the successes of 2022 and 2023 where we did a majority of the policy um but um I was very surprised uh work bipartisan uh very surprised we didn't entertain any of the reform bills around eviction which is probably one of the single biggest problems facing our state right now within the housing provider space and and none of those were were brought up to to deal with it all right next we'll go to uh John Stang hi just uh a cold blooded political question on two of your two bills that you are opposing the um the parental rights bill and the initiative bill I'm going to throw at you you just don't have the votes to stop them is there anything that you can realistically do to oppose them or are you just going to have to go down swinging and just accept the fact that you're outnumbered well I don't think we're outnumbered John but I appreciate your comment I don't think we're outnumbered because the people of the state of Washington are with us uh on the parental rights Bill uh the opposition that bill is is over the top parents are frustrated and I'm talking about Republican parents independent parents and Democratic parents that the Democrats in Olympia uh want to redu eliminate their rights so uh yep they got us outnumbered in legislators here but those legislators us and the ones on the other side of the aisle need to listen to their constituents and their constituents are pretty clear they don't want their rights as parents to be messed with so I don't think we're done there yet uh we'll see if they want to continue to thumb their nose at parents then uh they certainly have that option I just wouldn't advise it uh same thing on the initiative killer Bill uh this is wildly opposed uh by in in both times it's been heard so far uh overwhelmingly I think 90 plus plus percent opposed uh they're getting lots of feedback from uh voters across the state that say uh they're saying don't do this that don't mess with our uh ability to access democracy directly so uh there's a lot more to and you know this John a lot more to legislature than just who has uh more more votes on each side of the aisle the people of the state of Washington matter and if if they if if we listen to them as we should I think that both these bills will fail to make make it Forward yeah I mean this this is just another year in the Democrats continue to salt on the initiative process because um they don't like when people of Washington May disagree with them um and it wasn't just this year they' they've added all sorts of rules and requirements in order for them to um be able to weaponize the initiative system for and against stuff that they don't want and this is just another step in it um I largely agree with Senator Brun I think that um this is a victory that will largely come for the people um and I it we often hear about you know the assault on our democracy and constitutional crisis I mean I I I guess I'm never going to listen to a lecture from a Democrat again about um you know attacking our systems of of voting and representation when they continue to do stuff like this um so blatantly you know in the opposed to what the people of the state of Washington want I am coming at you again sort of the coldblooded vote counting thing the Democratic leaders uh are fairly firmly ins sconed in their stances about 90% of the votes in the in either chamber are usually straight party votes and I've asked the same question on the Democrats on some things that they don't have the votes on um do you do you have a realistic chance yeah I I would say I think we do have a realistic chance I think there is a lot of Democrats over there that believe in the initiative process as a matter of fact there's initiatives that they've supported um and I think that there the Democrats are going to have to spend more time arm twisting some of their members to support something like this uh when a lot of their members know that this is you know an attack on a fundamental constitutionally protected uh right for the people thank you all right next we will go to uh Mitchell Roland good morning uh I want to follow up on something that Senator Chris gon said earlier he said that the budget deficit was closer to $6.6 billion not 122 billion as projected by ofm as rning if you give a little bit more detail on how you arrived at that figure compared to the number that's been used um by ofm up to this point yeah I'd be glad to so if you remember back to November time frame we started hearing that there may be a $4 billion shortfall and then that quickly jumped to seven or eight billion and then that jumped to 10 or 12 and then you know in in recent times uh we've heard 14 maybe 15 so as all of these numbers started to grow I started becoming very uh dubious of of what what exactly is being considered inside of the shortfall and so I reached out to nonpartisan staff in December and I asked them to come up with the actual number uh the maintenance level uh number of what is the shortfall so if you take away all of the politics you take away all of the you know the new new spending uh fancy new things and you look at what is required to run government next year in a manner that you're running it this year uh then you're looking at $6.7 billion and that's from uh the the ways and means nonpartisan staff Mitchell did you have a followup uh just to clarify so that 6.7 billion will that be spread out over 4 yours as well that's correct okay all righty thank you all right next we will go with Bill from Washington state standard hi there thanks for taking my questions uh I have two um they're on two different tax bills they're being heard in house finance uh this morning just trying to get your perspective on each of these one is uh hb1 1907 it would apply uh business and the B tax and sales and use tax to storage unit transactions and and the other is hb1 1839 which would eliminate a $9 million cap on the advanced Computing search charge uh that's a tax that's on large Tech firms and the money goes to higher education um just hoping to get some perspective from your positions on those those bills if possible well they're not in the Senate so I don't know a lot about them it is kind of crazy to me that the the Democratic majorities are are interested in taxing uh Self Storage you don't go get any more working Washingtonian than Self Storage uh they claim to want to have Progressive taxes that that get after the folks at the top of the spectrum this seems like the absolute opposite of that so I'm a little surprised they're doing that on on the ad the the the cap on the advanced Computing search charge um this seems just plain counterproductive this something it's put in place to help uh help encourage technical education it's working uh we have a vibrant and uh Tech sector in our state some would say the foundation of our economy uh why uh in that situation would you want to attack the the the part of your economy uh that is that's you know doing so well it doesn't make any sense I would I would argue that EG is the foundation of our economy but that's okay we have many great sectors in our economy thankfully we're very lucky that's right um now you here's the thing my and I Stokes representative stokesberry said this quite often and he's right you tax things you want to have less of right the climate commitment Act was a tax to reduce carbon um here we have a a very thriving part of our economy and you're going to increase taxes on that that's either going to do one of two things send the industry out of this state which will net cost us more than this tax would collect or to um get costs get passed on to the consumer which again means less money for work in Washingtonian so uh why if it ain't broke don't fix it I I would just add I I agree with Senator Braun I think you know they're I don't know why maybe I'll use the word desperate but I think creative I mean storage units one of the fastest growing segments uh we've seen over the last 10 years of the development of storage units why because our population is growing the other part is that we're any new building in the supply side of housing is either multif family which doesn't have a lot of storage or single family that's built very small because of the requirements of zoning and everything else uh confining within the GMA again so you have forced an issue where you must have areas to store your stuff as George Carlin would say uh so yeah creative way it's another door it's another door tax it's crazy that you would store tax somebody for storing uh their possessions so you know pretty ridiculous but you know it's not out of the realm of opport opportunity for them I I think there's many other ones that we haven't yet even seen that they're looking at as far as new taxes uh within that space I'm pretty sure they're going to mandate we check our couch cushions once a year for any coins and remit them to the uh treasury well and and I just tag on to this a little bit because it appears to me that taxing storage units is an anti-r tax because whenever you think about the people who need those storage units you're looking at people who are renting uh apartments and possibly don't have sufficient storage inside of their apartment unit so it seems like this is an anti-er tax and you know I don't want to lose sight of some of the other taxes that have been proposed already we call them the uh We've dubbed them the the mega taxes and that's the you know the wealth tax which you're looking at $13 billion over four years you're looking at the payroll or the Jump Start Tax which could be about $8 billion over four years and then you're looking at the bno search charge which could be about $6 billion uh to put that in Contex in context whenever we were looking at the capital gains income tax that was a$2 billion tax these are Mega huge taxes that are waiting out there and of course nobody's really talking about them right now uh and I would expect that whatever proposals that that the Democrats do come up with uh they're probably going to wait until the last minute uh as a strategy in order to uh you know keep the public from talking about it for you know a number of weeks but we shouldn't lose sight those are on the way Bill did you have a followup uh nope that's it for me thanks all right last question we'll go to carlen Johnson of the Center Square John um also from house finance today a couple of other tax related um bills that I wanted to get your take on one has to do with um uh education funding and this is uh 1356 so this would increase the maximum per pupil limit uh for school enrichment levies gradually over several years um as you all are aware we already fund our schools pretty well on a per pupil basis but this would let them go after uh not only local Levy dollars but also increase the the property taxes that the state can take to increase per pupil funding so I want to get your take on that and um the other one is HB 2019 making the estate tax quote more Progressive that's also getting a public hearing today in house finance um yeah I'll speak to 1356 u a number of problems here um again you've got tax incre increases on Working Families right now when they can least afford it um and I think a bigger problem and issue that I have with this personally is that um it's just going to increase School District inequities um you know it was almost immediately after McClary got fixed we went back on um equal funding for for our school districts and now Rich districts can do a a tiny Levy and get tons of money and four more uh Rural and less property intensive districts can't do that and so once again uh we're setting ourselves up for a future lawsuit and failure and there's two you know two groups that are going to hurt in this the kids and you know working families that are having to burden all these taxes and we're we're we're getting to a breaking point where we just can't keep doing this um and expect people to be able to you know make ends meet here in our state yeah I'll second uh representative Cory's comments on the the uh per pupil tax this is this is a bad idea it's it's regressive it it hits small rural districts uh makes it them unable to keep up with other districts in terms of funding for K12 public education uh it's bad and it's just the wrong way our Paramount duty is to fund education we shouldn't be uh you know from the state level uh we shouldn't be looking for ways to allow locals to fund it from local taxes because we know that leads to inequity uh when it comes to the estate tax is house bill so I don't know it super well I know a little a little bit about it I think there's U you what at least one good aspect of it is that it it raises and ties the exemption to CPI again that's how it was done back in I think like 2014 that particular CPI marker expired and therefore we have kind of this strange place in state law where it doesn't increase over time with inflation I think that's a small good thing in the bill but broadly uh the bill takes what is one of the most out just uh death taxes in the country and makes it worse uh which is hard to imagine but that's that's what it appears to do so unbalance bad Bill uh the wrong approach to fixing uh what is a real problem in our state tax uh statute harlene did you have a followup no that'll do it thank you all right with that we will go to closing remarks starting with representative Corey yeah think thank you John I want to thank everyone for um you know joining us today and some some really good questions I mean that's kind of the universe where we're looking at um and I will speak for my house Republican caucus that um we are coming to the capital every day um to fight for working washingtonians um we're we're looking at every single proposal as how does that impact uh moms and dads families across the state um and what can we do to reduce the burden on them um there's some some bipartisan areas that we're working on and obviously you've heard a lot of areas where uh we're going to be fundamentally opposed and um it's our Northstar and it's very clear what we need to do um and the good news is is we've got you know proposed solutions to help fix Washington um address these concerns around the budget um get out of here on time and without creating new taxes and burdens on businesses and families in our state yeah I'll just add a few things one I want to thank again thank everyone for being here uh we're week seven it's about to get exciting we've been pretty quiet when it comes to the budget uh but this is going to be the issue uh through the end of the session is is how do we uh come up with a budget that lives within our means that gets our spending back on a good track and doesn't uh go down the road of these enormous Mega taxes that are going to be uh wildly harmful to our state at every economic level uh and and Senator gildon get did a great job of explaining just how big these would be and how impactful they would be to the cost of living here in our state and frankly to the economic Vitality of our state going for forward so uh this is the time when we need media more than ever I appreciate your questions keep keep them coming I hope you're uh you'll you'll spend a little bit more time focused on the budget it's not always a exciting thing but this is the most important thing we have going on in the next uh s nine weeks is or eight weeks I guess uh is how do we uh live within our means how do we do the right thing for for the people state of Washington without driving the cost of living up even more so thanks again have a great day all right thank you everyone we will be back next Tuesday at the same time great thank you