Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “Lisa Brown”

Time to flip the 5th

Time to flip the 5th

August 16, 2018

richardson

While the national media has been obsessing over the “too close to call” photo-finish in the special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, I’ve been studying the primary election outcome in a district closer to home – the 5th Congressional District in Washington State.

Washington’s 5th includes many communities that are a stone’s throw from Idaho, including Spokane, Pullman, Clarkston, and Asotin. Since 2005, it has been represented by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, now a member of House GOP leadership.

An obedient lieutenant in Paul Ryan’s hyper-partisan caucus, McMorris Rodgers is part of the right-wing cabal propping up Mr. Trump. She recently held a fat cat fundraiser featuring Devin Nunes, the disreputable chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Memorably, Nunes did his utmost to bury the truth about Russia’s attack on our 2016 election. The committee hearings he chaired were a joke.

Recently, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow played an audio tape made by a person who paid to attend this fundraiser. On the tape, Nunes and McMorris Rodgers could be heard stealthily scheming to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein once they had retained their majority. Their intent, clearly, is to protect the president by shutting down the Special Counsel’s investigation. Indeed, Nunes and McMorris Rodgers have done little more than carry water for a manifestly corrupt administration, becoming complicit in the increasingly evident cover-up.

The GOP has shown itself manifestly incapable of putting country above party. They will not hold this president to account. That is why those of us who believe Mr. Trump is a threat to our republic must do everything we can to ensure that Republicans lose their majority. We can take an important step in that direction by defeating McMorris Rodgers.

For the last quarter of a century, Washington’s 5th district has been regarded as a lock for Republicans. But after the primary vote, McMorris Rodgers looks vulnerable; it is not unreasonable to think the district will flip. The state of Washington has a top-two primary in which the two candidates receiving the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, go head to head in the general election. This year, McMorris Rodgers received less than 50 percent of the vote, and – of perhaps greater significance – Democratic challenger Lisa Brown was nipping at her heals, coming within just 1 percent of the incumbent.

Lisa Brown is an exceptionally strong, superbly qualified candidate. She has had proven success at the ballot box, in the Washington state legislature, as an economics professor and, most recently, as chancellor of Washington State University Spokane. First elected to the Washington state House of Representatives in 1992, Brown went on to serve with distinction in the Washington state senate. In 2005, she became the first Democratic woman in the state to hold the position of Senate Majority Leader.

Lisa Brown’s record in the state legislature is one of real accomplishment. She led the creation of the state's Mental Health Parity Act of 2005, which improved the insurance coverage of mental health services for Washington residents. And she worked to successfully expand children's health care and create the nonprofit Prescription Drug Assistance Foundation. She fought to ensure the state properly invested in public schools and infrastructure, worked to strengthen and diversify the regional economy, and helped pass landmark legislation including the simple majority for schools constitutional amendment and marriage equality.

Idaho Democrats and other Idaho progressives would do well to support Lisa Brown’s candidacy. Democrats need to flip 24 Republican-held House seats this year to take control of the 435-seat chamber. Most of us have limited resources and want to support candidates who have a realistic shot at winning. The fact that Lisa Brown came within a hair’s breadth of besting McMorris Rodgers in the Washington primary permits the inference that she is such a candidate. Her stellar record of public service tells us she would be an outstanding member of Congress.

It’s time to flip the Fifth.
 

Out of fuel, for now

April 23, 2009
brown

Lisa Brown

It was the probability that income taxes in Washington would get only so far before the plug was pulled, as it was today by the Senate Democrats. The income tax - even this version applying only to those with annual income of a quarter-million dollars or more - is just a tough sell in Washington, and doesn't have "the legislative support to move forward at this point."

The immediate news article notes that the proposal is "politically risky," which makes the sponsorship interesting. The key figure behind it, and publicly, is Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, and at this point maybe the single most likely entrant into the 2012 gubernatorial race.

That suggests the issue won't go away, and Brown's comment on the subject from a couple of weeks ago suggests the form it might take.

Opponents to a modest income tax on the most affluent in our state have been vocal and vociferous. Because they can’t argue about what the proposal is, they focus on the specter of what it might become. In the past, this has been a prescription for the status quo, preserving a tax system that is more unstable and less fair than the people of Washington deserve.

Fortunately, there are also those rising to voice support. I have heard in recent days from religious leaders and representatives of higher education faculty as well as from individual citizens from all over the state, who are pleased that this conversation is taking place.

In the end, I predict that any proposal, whether this session or in the future, will go to voters. I hope and trust that with an open dialogue about the modest costs to those who can afford them and the tremendous benefits to everyone else, that common sense and the common good will prevail.

Will the income tax actually be a major piece of the debate in 2012?

The process, not the substance

March 5, 2009
court

Here's a good example, in the just-released Washington Supreme Court case of Lisa Brown v Brad Owen, of why you often have to be careful in assessing what has just happened. The case was decided, but the question it answered wasn't what you might have thought it was.

For example, this from a press release today from Senator Mike Hewitt: “Today’s state Supreme Court decision was a win for the people of Washington. Their approval of Initiative 960 told the Legislature that they wanted it to show restraint when raising taxes, and they wanted more transparency when it came to knowing how much legislation would take out of their pockets. It’s great news, especially as we’re hearing talk of new taxes to fill the state’s budget hole, that the public will be protected from the Legislature passing huge tax hikes by a simple majority vote."

Hold on a moment.

The underpinning is Initiative 960, a Tim Eyman measure passed in 2007. The first descriptive sentence in the voter guide said that "This measure would require either a two-thirds vote in each house of the legislature or voter approval for all tax increases," and that pretty much describes it. But its constitutionality was challenged, even before its passage, and that issue remained an open question.

On February 29, 2008, the Senate voted on Senate Bill 6931, which ordered that "the liquor control board shall add an equivalent surcharge of $0.42 per liter on all retail sales of spirits, excluding licensee, military, and tribal sales." the money could go half to substance abuse treatment and half to DUI enforcement efforts. It was in effect a tax increase measure. The vote was 25-21 in favor, but Lieutenant Governor Brad Owen ruled that the measure had failed, because it didn't receive a two-thirds vote. Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, who supported the bill, protested, saying I-960 was unconstitutional. Owen replied that courts decide constitutionality, he wasn't a court, and that was that. Brown took the matter to the Washington Supreme Court, asking for a writ of mandamus - an order declaring that the bill had indeed passed and therefore needed to be advanced to the House for action there. (Both Owen and Brown, by the way, are Democrats.)

The Supreme Court left Owen's ruling in place. But what's key here is why. (more…)

WA: Legislature ahead

January 11, 2009
Jeff Kropf

It's a shame in some ways the Washington Legislature has just 105 days (okay, with a possible 30-day special as a trailer) to do its thing. There are some really basic questions this legislature could attack, and the structural situation is that it could if there's enough time.

Or, it could just run through the numbers, do the job of passing the budget and setting the revenue streams, and let it go at that. But there's potential here for more.

The key reason is that a triangular situation seems to be developing: Most of the legislative Democrats on one side, almost all of the Republicans on another, and Governor Chris Gregoire more or less in the middle.

This comes together simply because there's one big issue in this upcoming session (and much the same is true in Oregon and Idaho), that being spending. The state currently is on track for a $6 billion deficit, and steady as it goes won't work. Decisions will have to be made: Are cuts to be made? Are taxes to be increased? Will there be some measure of the two? Will some other partial options be found (and, while there are no fiscal wonder pills, there may be some additional options)?

Gregoire seems to have drawn a sand-line around some areas (education, debt service and some others) as no-cut territory, and is looking for major slices elsewhere. The Republicans, and probably some Democrats, would expand the cuttable territory, while most Democrats will probably want to expand the land of no-cuts. What we probably won't see, though, is a serious attempt to simply try to leave everything as it is; as Republican House Leader Richard DeBolt said, "we've never seen a deficit this large before." And he won't get argument on that.

Maybe because the number of Democrats in each chamber is so large, we're not hearing so much (yet at least) of simple anti-government rhetoric. That may be a sign that Republicans recognize they do have a slightly less ambitious but very real opportunity here. Senator Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, has been quoted as saying that spending increases in the last few years by Gregoire and the Democratic majority account for more of the deficit problem than the economic downturn does; and even if you quibble about the numbers, the budget runups in the last couple of biennial cycles certainly have inflated that projected deficit in a major way.

So the question some of the Republicans are getting at - is the state being too generous? - takes on some urgency and could move toward the center of the debate. Not a simplistic philosophical question, but a look at details and degrees. And that, actually, is the sort of thing a legislature should be looking at hardest.

That doesn't automatically translate to something specific. The Olympian has summarized, "Just consider what is on the chopping block: Pay increases for state workers and public school teachers, smaller classes in public schools, health-care coverage for children and low-income families, expansion of the higher education system, and the state human services safety net."

And Senator Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, for example, said all this raises the question of "what kind of state we want to live in, and whether we want to sacrifice some of our key services." But the issue may be joined, seriously. (more…)