Once again, lawmakers show contempt for you

As of Wednesday afternoon, House Republicans — and a handful of Democrats, including 26th District Rep.

Larry Seaquist (D-Gig Harbor) — in Olympia were still battling to prevent the wishes of the voters from being subverted with the suspension Initiative 960.

If only the delaying tactic could have worked until November.

“We cannot go out there and break the will of the people,” said Seaquist’s 26th District colleague, Rep. Jan Angel (R-Port Orchard).

They can and they did.

I-960, passed by a majority of Washington residents in 2007, has been a stone in the shoe of free-spending lawmakers ever since because it requires a two-thirds majority in the Legislature in order to raise taxes.

The Senate, minus 26th District Sen. Derek Kilmer (D-Gig Harbor), earlier this session approved a bill that would “temporarily” repeal 960, and the House dutifully followed suit Wednesday evening —after hours of fruitless debate.

It speaks volumes about the public’s understandable distrust of their elected leaders that the voters felt the need to pass the ballot measure in the first place, and those who support its repeal are living down to those expectations.

The last thing most individual taxpayers need these days is to be squeezed further. And from a basic economic standpoint, if you ever expect businesses to start hiring people again, you’d also think the lawmakers would be doing everything in their power to reduce corporate taxes rather than raise them.

On a fundamental level, the voters understand there are limits to what government can — and should — do, and that every problem in the human condition can’t be prevented or solved by throwing money at it.

The majority in the Legislature, however, can’t wrap its head around solutions that don’t require spending never-ending amounts of someone else’s money.

It’s heartbreaking that the lawmakers, who don’t get it, once again subsituted their vision for that of the voters, who do.