Save small businesses through direct cash assistance, loans, and other supports, and ensuring people have money to spend.
Increase assistance and expand services to keep families housed, fed, and healthy, and put more money in peoples’ pockets.
Keep cash flowing through our communities by investing in infrastructure and job creation and injecting consumer demand back into our economy.
Washington state has the most upside-down tax code in the nation, meaning the poorest families pay up to six times more of their income in taxes than the richest. By tapping a tiny portion of the massive untaxed wealth of a small handful of the state's richest people and corporations, Washington will be able to fund these much-needed investments.
It won’t materially affect the lives of our wealthy neighbors in any way - the rich will still be rich - and the investments that we fund will create a stronger, more inclusive economy for everyone in Washington. In fact, recent economic modeling shows that an investment the size of the Washington Recovery Agenda would create tens of thousands of jobs, spur economic growth and drive up consumer spending by billions of dollars.
Washington’s economy is stuck in a destructive feedback loop. More than 1.4 million workers have filed for unemployment since March, as thousands of temporary business closures have become permanent. Cutting back state and local investments will only perpetuate this cycle, because you can’t starve your way out of a recession.
All of us, no matter our background or where we come from, believe that our economy is healthiest when everyone is able to participate in it. The only way to disrupt this death spiral is by injecting money and consumer demand back into our economy. When people are prosperous and stable and have more money to spend in their communities, businesses make more money and hire more workers, our economy grows and we all thrive. It’s a virtuous cycle.
It’s critical to understand that COVID merely toppled an economy left fragile by decades of trickle-down, racist, and sexist economic policies that left millions of workers and families fighting to keep up with the cost of basic goods while their paychecks flattened. The twin public health and economic crises have only doubled-down on those preexisting conditions, widening economic and health disparities for Black, brown, and indigenous workers, other workers of color, and women.
To fully recover our economy, it’s not enough to return to a status quo - we have to address the structural problems that primed us for this crisis in the first place. That means addressing inequities in our tax system and making intentional investment decisions to make sure those who have been left behind in our economy aren’t left behind in our recovery. Because no matter how much aid the federal government might send, if we don’t do those things then we’ll just be keeping whole systemic inequity and retaining a fragile economy to go along with it. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do, because our economy is healthiest when everyone can afford to participate in it.
Washington voters want to raise taxes to grow the economy.
There is broad public support for legislative action on increasing taxes on those who can afford it: 63 percent support raising taxes on the wealthiest households that can most afford it to kickstart the economy and support workers and families.
