WA Rep: Inslee is ‘detached from reality’ and ‘prefers to govern alone’

Governor Jay Inslee instituted new COVID-19 lockdown mandates this week, impacting restaurants, retail stores, and numerous personal and professional services. There are renewed calls for a special legislative session coming from Republicans, but Gov. Inslee says there’s no reason for that because he hasn’t heard anything specific coming from the Republicans to warrant a special session.

To discuss this and how Inslee is handling the shutdowns, Rep. Drew MacEwen (R-Union) joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH.

“We’ve got seven to eight months worth of things that we’ve given to the administration that could be done. We’ve been calling for a special legislative session since June, and this is just yet another case study of Jay Inslee saying one thing, doing another, and ignoring another,” MacEwen said.

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“When a crisis hits — whether it’s COVID or 9/11, for instance — in the moment when the crisis first hits, you gotta make command decisions, make executive decisions, and stabilize the situation. But then you step back and you bring people in and say, ‘OK, how do we do this together? How do we get the country, or in this case, the state back on track? How do we help the economy?’ And he has never done that,” MacEwen added. “He prefers to govern alone.”

MacEwen says Inslee’s actions are detached from the reality of businesses that are struggling and have no idea how they’re going to survive.

“This is serious and the businesses that are still around today have barely survived through this pandemic, and to suggest they can wait until January, when we don’t even know how we’re gonna conduct session yet, is just so detached from reality,” he said.

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“You have businesses, and employers, and employees worrying about how they’re going to survive the next two weeks.”

Along with the shutdown, Inslee announced another $50 million available in aid to help, saying he would distribute the funds by the end of the year, which MacEwen believes is too late.

“That’s going to be too late for a number of businesses. I mean, we’ve seen thousands of businesses closed since the start of this pandemic, including ones that were able to somewhat operate at the start. This notion that somehow businesses have stockpiles of money that they can rely on to get through something again just shows his detachment from reality,” he said.

“That’s the important thing. You know, when you govern a state of our size, of 7.5 million — it wouldn’t matter whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat in office — you lose a little bit of a touch when you’re at that level, but you stay in touch by communicating with the Legislature and those that are closest to the people. And he just refuses to do that.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.