The MAGA regime has spent the past year attacking the programs that help working people put food on the table and stay healthy, while giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy corporations and billionaires who back them. Our state lawmakers must act this year to tackle both of these problems head-on by making the wealthy few pay what they owe in taxes to fund the services that we all rely on.
Here at Fuse, we’re focused on making progress in key areas that will fight to reverse the MAGA Congress’s massive cuts to our essential services, and ensure all Washingtonians have a chance to live in communities where their rights are protected and their basic needs are met.
To advance these priorities, we’ve identified a number of bills that, if enacted, would bring needed progress on everything from fully funding our schools to meet the needs of their students, funding childcare so parents can afford it, and protecting our state’s initiative system from abuse by wealthy interests.
Rebalancing our upside-down tax code and fighting wealth inequality
We are fighting to make sure that Washington’s ultra-wealthy pay their share for the community services that we all rely on by supporting progressive revenue. Solutions like the Millionaires Tax, Wealth Tax, and the Well Washington Fund would all be meaningful steps toward making sure the wealth generated in Washington is used for the good of everyone who lives here. We’re also working to expand the Working Families Tax Credit to help working families afford the rising cost of living.
Protecting our democracy
The Initiative Integrity Act would restore confidence in our state’s initiative system and make it harder for wealthy interests – like multi-millionaire Bryan Heywood – to buy their way onto our ballots. The bill prohibits the practice of compensating signature gatherers based on the number of signatures to disincentivize them from using aggressive, misleading tactics. It will also cut down on the scammy tactic of filing duplicate initiatives in an effort to get the most favorable ballot title possible, which is sometimes used to trick voters.
Other important bills this session we support:
Ensuring every vote is counted. Fuse is supporting a number of bills to upgrade and safeguard our voting system by setting standards for communities that use ranked-choice voting, allow Voting Rights Act changes to avoid drawn-out, costly lawsuits, and prevent baseless attempts by bad actors to challenge and remove voters’ registrations.
Shielding reproductive health care. With MAGA attacks on our freedoms growing, it is critical that lawmakers vote to defend abortion care providers’ private information, and to fund reproductive health care in our state using surplus funds collected from insurance companies.
