‘No taxes are fun or easy:’ Democratic majority leader justifies tax increases in new WA budget

Washington’s 2025 legislative session has been described as “one of the most grueling legislative sessions in recent memory,” according to “Seattle’s Morning News” co-host Charlie Harger.

From a multi-billion dollar budget gap to sharp debates over taxes, lawmakers spent more than 100 days making their final decisions.

House Democratic Majority Leader and representative for the 34th legislative district, Joe Fitzgibbon, said that the hardest part about this session was grappling with the size of the budget shortfall.

“We had somewhere between $12-16 billion in the operating budget alone, and then another $8 billion or so in the transportation budget that separated revenues that we expected to bring in and the expenditures that the Washingtonians were counting on,” Fitzgibbon said.

Fitzgibbon said that personal loss made a huge impact on the legislative session, with the state seeing the unexpected deaths of both Senator Bill Ramos and former House Speaker Frank Chopp.

Fitzgibbon also noted “uncertainty and chaos at the federal government,” citing examples of Washingtonians impacted by the loss of federal workers, deportations, and changes in tariffs.

“Washington is the nation’s number one most trade-dependent state, and so if we’re in a trade war with Canada and China, that’s not good news for the Washington economy,” Fitzgibbon said. “And the possibility that Congress might cut Medicaid, that’s the single biggest way in which the federal government contributes to state budgets. So all of that definitely made us a little bit more on edge and a little bit more nervous about the changes that might come our way from D.C.”

With a tax package that is expected to net approximately $9.4 billion, the final budget will include new taxes for Washingtonians. Fitzgibbon believes they all serve an essential purpose.

“No taxes are fun or easy. Every tax that we enact and that people pay has an impact, and we don’t take that lightly. So what we tried to do is focus the taxes that we did enact on people and businesses that had the most ability to pay,” Fitzgibbon said. “Other than the estate tax and the capital gains tax, which only the very wealthiest Washingtonians pay, all the other taxes that we increased were taxes on businesses, and particularly the biggest, highest-grossing businesses in the state.”

Listen to the full conversation below.

Listen to “Seattle’s Morning News” with Charlie Harger and Manda Factor weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio. Subscribe to the podcast here.