How Is This Legal?

Hey everybody, it's Representative Travis Cotour. I'm here with Reps Jim Walsh and Matt Marshall, and we've had some concerning news lately about a bill, House Bill 2034, that passed off the House floor a few days ago about raiding the LEF-1 pension, and LEF stands for Law Enforcement Officers and Firefighters. These are folks in their 70s and 80s who have served us well in this state, and now we're raiding almost $4 billion from their pension fund. Jim, what did you think about that? It's horrible. I mean, raiding LEF-1 and the other state pension plans used to be considered impossible, the third rail. You can't do that. And the tax and spend left here at Olympia has touched the third rail. They're stealing money out of these pension funds, which are capital assets, earned, contributed assets, to cover operating shortfalls in their Climate Commitment Act and some of their other ongoing operational expenses. You never steal money out of your principal to cover ongoing expenses. It's bad fiscal management, and that's what this bill is. Well, even worse, they were taking $569 million of it, Jim, and sending it to the Climate Commitment Act. Matt, what did you think about that? I mean, this is an incredibly well-funded account. Every person in the state of Washington is feeling the squeeze because of this Climate Commitment scam that the state is pushing right now. And we had several suggestions on the floor for better places to put the money. We talked about putting it into education, which everybody's struggling. We see schools in binding conditions. We had options to give it to transportation with one of the worst pothole problems in the nation. Clearly, they shut down all of our proposals, but it's incredibly frustrating to see these retirees being robbed of the money that they worked for. Yeah, and to pay for something that is basically the mixture of the Green New Scam and USAID all rolled into one. And we pointed out on the House floor a lot of those excesses and waste in the Climate Commitment Act, like sending $650,000 to study environmental justice in Africa. That's not what we should be raiding our pensions for in the state of Washington to cover up for negligent budgeting and a spending addiction that we have here in Olympia. We're gonna continue to fight this, and now it's gonna head over to the Senate, and the Senate Republicans are gonna have to fight it as well. This is becoming big news. You just don't raid pensions. That's exactly what's happening with Mayor Mondani in New York because we don't embrace the warmth of collectivism. We like rugged individualism in this state, and we don't think that we should be touching these pensions. This was cops and firefighters, but teachers, other state employees, they're gonna come after your pensions too. Contact the Senate. There's still a chance to fight this. Reach out to every senator, your senator, the chairs of the different committees, Ways and Means committees. Make your voice heard.