Many of Governor Inslee’s decisions regarding small business and local schools are going to have long-term social and economic ramifications, and critics are concerned the governor isn’t taking the right approach. Gubernatorial candidate Joshua Freed joined The Todd Herman Show to discuss Inslee’s actions with small business and what he would do differently.

“The sad thing is we have a governor who’s very one-minded. He can only focus on one thing at one time. It was carbon before now and now it’s just the virus. He doesn’t have any economic plan to be able to move our state forward,” Freed said. “I called for a special session, as several others did as well, saying that we need to have a plan for immediate relief for taxpayers and small business today.”

“We could have B&O no tax holiday for a period of time. We could put the retail sales tax on hold, even for a month or two after the stay-at-home order is removed. He could allow bridge grants, certainly put a freeze on all spending that pushed forward in the last legislative session, with the 17% spending increase,” Freed proposed.

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Freed says Inslee has put the state in a very difficult situation with his declaration of winners and losers with the delineation between essential and nonessential businesses.

“He’s declared that some businesses are essential, some businesses are not essential. The ones that are essential have received public funds, those that have not received public funds are nonessential. The virus doesn’t know the difference between the two,” Freed said.

“I got a call from a dear friend of mine a couple days ago. He and his wife are responsible for delivering meals to 100 different families within their school district every week … He said, ‘Jay Inslee’s policies literally are starving people in Washington state today. He’s declared that these families are nonessential so they can’t work. They can’t pay their rent, they can’t pay the utilities, they can’t buy groceries.'”

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Freed believes that it’s essential to find a pathway for people to get back to work, and that Inslee’s current decisions are not commensurate with the state’s virus projections.

“We’ve already shown that we’ve overcome this curb. The mass projection right now is we’ll have 700 deaths in Washington state. Now you and I definitely value human life, but there’s also 7.5 million citizens in Washington state … We could drive six miles per hour on our freeways rather than 60 and make sure that no one ever dies,” he said.

“We have parents that desperately want to go back to work, and we need to get Washington working again.”

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