‘They’re coming for everybody’s salary’: Former U.S. Rep. tells Curley WA income tax won’t stop at millionaires

Former U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who recently joined the Vote Yes Repeal the Income Tax campaign as a spokesperson, joined “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio and warned that Washington’s new income tax, passed last year and set to levy a 9.9% rate on income above $1 million, is structured to expand to all earners.

Beutler said the legislature rejected an amendment that would have permanently limited the tax to millionaires, which she called the clearest sign of what’s coming.

“They rejected an amendment protecting all the rest of us,” Beutler said. “I don’t make a million dollars. I’m several zeros from making a million dollars a year. But I know they’re coming for my salary because they have to, in order to enable the spending that they have been doing year over year, more than a 15% increase for each budget. That’s insane.”

Beutler said the projected revenue from the millionaires’ tax, roughly $3 billion, will not keep pace with Olympia’s spending, leaving a gap that lawmakers will have to fill by lowering the threshold.

“The amount that they’re going to take from the millionaires will still leave a hole,” she said. “So they’re coming for the rest of us.”

Voters will decide whether to repeal it through Initiative 645 on Nov. 3.

KIRO host John Curley asked Beutler to assume good faith on the part of lawmakers who voted for the tax. She said most genuinely believe it’s the right thing to do but lack awareness of how the state’s economy actually works.

“A tremendous lack of awareness about where money comes from,” Beutler said. “Most of our economy is small and medium-sized businesses. Most Americans, and it’s true again in Washington, are employed by small and medium-sized businesses.”

Beutler stands by Trump impeachment vote, ties it to WA’s income tax fight

Curley played Beutler’s 2021 floor speech explaining her vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump, one of 10 Republicans to do so, and asked if she would change any of the words today.

“Not a one,” Beutler said. “It’s not about sides. Nothing, none of this is about sides. That’s where we’ve gone wrong.”

She connected the same principle to the income tax debate, arguing that both issues are driven by fear tactics that pit groups against each other.

“It creates that tribalism,” Beutler said. “It’s my team against yours, and it becomes existential. That’s why we devalue each other.”

Beutler blamed one-party control in Olympia for a series of cost increases hitting working families in healthcare, gas, housing, and timber, and said most of the problems voters are angry about trace back to government mismanagement, not market failures.

“Healthcare costs have gone through the roof. That’s the government’s fault,” Beutler said. “Gas has gone through the roof. That’s the government’s fault. The cost of housing has gone through the roof.”

Curley asked whether voters will reject the income tax for an 11th time. Herrera Beutler said the outcome depends on whether the campaign can break through the “millionaires’ tax” framing.

“If they know it’s an income tax, they will vote no,” Beutler said. “57% believe it’s already coming for them.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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