What’s at stake in this election?

Since March, more than 1.3 million individual Washingtonians have filed first-time unemployment insurance claims. Thousands of small businesses have shuttered forever, as temporary closures became permanent. In this election, everyone has the same top issues - the health of their families, and their financial security.

It’s critical to realize that COVID didn’t cause this crisis - rather, it ignited an economy left flammable by decades of trickle-down economics and neoliberal politicians who told us what’s good for billionaires and big businesses is what’s good for our economy. The rich got richer, and have continued to get richer even during the pandemic, while millions of Americans - particularly women, Black, Latinx, and other workers of color - got pushed further into economic peril.

Trickle-down policies made us vulnerable to this crisis, yet some are calling for those exact same trickle-down policies to get us out of it. For months, we've heard the trickle-down doom squad clamoring for knee-jerk budget cuts to state and local budgets, across-the-board slashing of programs, frozen wages and government layoffs. Make no mistake: this is the quickest and surest way to worsen the economic crisis.

Budget cuts will worsen the burden on already-struggling families and small businesses, as well as prolong the recession and delay our recovery. We know because we’ve been here before, and we have the data to prove it. During the Great Recession, states that cut spending and pulled back on investments saw slower job growth and higher unemployment in 2012 compared to states that resisted knee-jerk cuts and actually increased spending. In fact, by 2012 states that increased spending during the Great Recession saw economic growth faster than even their pre-recession rates.

The reason behind this is simple - increasing spending during an economic crisis keeps cash flowing through our communities by putting more money in peoples’ pockets, which in turn boosts consumer spending at local businesses, helping them stay open and create more jobs within their communities. Budget cuts, on the other hand, deprive an already-starving economy, perpetuating a negative feedback loop of no consumer spending, businesses closing and even more people losing their jobs.

We’re in danger of getting stuck in this negative feedback loop unless we elect legislators who understand how the economy works - that the real job creators are people who have enough money in their pockets to be customers - and that we need bold, progressive solutions to save Washington’s economy. And it’s not enough to simply “return to normal” - an economy that already left out millions of people and families. We can build back equitably, and create an economy that actually works for everyone, not just those at the top.