OLYMPIA—With lawmakers returning to Olympia on January 12, 2026, the Lynnwood Times met with Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins (D-Tacoma) to discuss the Washington State House Democrat Caucus’ priorities going into the 2026 legislative session.
At the highest level, Jinkins said, the party will be seeking to “protect Washingtonians from federal overreach” – a move first trailblazed during President Trump’s first term but still requires much more work, the Speaker continued.
Second to that, affordability remains a big priority for Washington State Democrats, which is an issue spread across the nation, Jinkins said, but hits close to home here in Washington — one of the country’s most internationally trade-dependent states with 40% of jobs and significant portions of state GDP driven by major exports — being severely impacted by tariffs.
The House Democrats will also be homing in on the state budget, currently facing a projected deficit of $4.3 billion over the next four years. This is predicted to be one of the legislature’s biggest challenges this session, Jinkins said, because—as it pertains to affordability, for example—typically the party would enhance affordability efforts by funding more slots for childcare, or more money in the working families tax credit but those investments will be a bigger challenge this year.
Protecting immigrant families
This year House Democrats are exploring a package of bills to enhance, and protect, immigrant rights in Washington State, from prohibiting law enforcement agents from wearing face masks, which would ensure the public that arresting officers are truly authorized to carry out arrests, and will further explore whether ICE agents could make arrests at schools and childcare facilities.
“We’re looking at all of those issues,” said Jinkins. “Honestly one of the most important things we can do is to make sure the Keep Washington Working bill, which we passed during the first Trump administration, is actually being carried out appropriately across jurisdictions across the state.”
Doing this, Jinkins added, doesn’t necessarily require more legislation though she does suspect there could be bills introduced this session that would make sure government agencies are in compliance of this bill and keeping funding flowing.
Low barrier housing
With the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) planning to place restrictions on low barrier housing, the House Democrats will likely try to allocate state funding, where appropriate, in these types of situations, said Jinkins.
“This has to do with a lot of the reductions in federal reductions that we still flowing to Washington State. In the Big Bad Bill, when we first saw it, it looked like they were really going to hit housing vouchers in a significant way. That was peeled back some, but they’re still going to do some things on housing vouchers,” said Jinkins. “We were going to give local governments the authority to tax in order to build housing, but we prohibited that money to be used on vouchers. The thinking was that was a federal responsibility, but now that we’re seeing that begin to peel back, and the feds begin to walk away, this is one of the things we’re looking at, not just with housing but in all the areas where we provide local governments with taxing authority – whether or not we ought to provide more flexibility so they could use money at a local level in ways the federal government may be impacting them.”
Washington State Budget
Despite Washington State being in a budget deficit—$1.5 billion for the current 2025-27 biennium alone, with a $4.3 billion over the next four years according to the Office of Financial Management—Speaker Jinkins said the state is in a “much more dynamic place” than it’s ever been. Still, the federal government, and the executive branch, seems to change daily in ways that have “huge impacts on Washingtonians,” said Jinkins.
Tariffs, for example, seem to fluctuate on a daily basis making it “hard to pin down” what to expect from long term results.
Washington State Democrats are proposing quite a few tax hikes for the 2026 legislative session, from a “millionaire’s tax,” to a “wealth tax”, to a “payroll tax,” – bringing in approximately $28 billion to the state annually if all pass though unlikely, according to Jinkins, especially given the taxation passed last year.
“I expect a number of these bills will be heard this year, but I think what we’re most concerned with is reforming our tax structure so that we have a less regressive tax structure. That would mean, for example with the millionaire’s tax, we would try and invest these in ways that would replace current taxes that we have that are highly regressive, or give tax breaks with working class families,” said Jinkins. “It’s making sure we don’t tax diapers, or baby products, or hygiene products, or other things that working families, when they’re tax, eat up a bigger chunk of their income than wealthier families.”
Other important investments for Washingtonians, Jinkins continued, are childcare, early K-12 education, and healthcare.
“There’s no shortage of opportunities, but our guiding principle will be what brings relief to working families and restricting our tax code in a way that brings more tax fairness,” said Jinkins.
Regarding Republican criticism concerning the proposed millionaire’s tax, for example, being “unconstitutional,” Speaker Jinkins said, in her 16 legislative sessions, there has never been a tax bill that has been passed that didn’t involve litigation and she expects this to be the case here. Still, she continued, it’s the legislature’s job to pass bills that they believe are constitutional, but the decision ultimately falls on the judicial branch.
“There’s always going to be an argument about anything. I was the prime sponsor of the Capitol Gains tax and Republicans argued that that was unconstitutional, all the way through when the court argued that it was not. I’m a lawyer by training and I work very hard that everything we do meets constitutional muster,” said Jinkins. “But the court is an independent branch of government, and it will make its own determination.”
Attracting new businesses to Washington
As for attracting new, and retaining existing businesses, and foreign investments to Washington state, Speaker Jinkins shared that she was proud of our state being home to some of the world’s “biggest and most successful corporations,” who are “here for a reason.”
She chalks it up to having a great workforce, a great environment, and a great tax structure (for businesses). Her worries, however, lie with small business across Washington and systems like a state B&O tax — which taxes on gross income from initiation – causing startups to lose money within their first few years.
“Those companies have a harder time getting going and I think doing things in our tax structure to help there would be a good thing for us to work on,” said Jinkins. “But continuing to protect our environment, continuing to have a great higher ed system in our state to produce great graduates here, transportation infrastructure, all of these things which we continue to work on year-after-year are the reasons why we have incredibly successful international businesses locating here and wanting to stay here.”
Public safety
As for public safety, Speaker Jinkins was pleased to see violent crimes plummeting across Washington State in 2025 and applauded the first set of graduates from the state’s new regional law enforcement training facilities —one located in Arlington, Snohomish County.
“Those investments that we’ve made, we’ve been able to produce more well-trained law enforcement officers to get them out on the street. When I speak, locally, with our police chief he is hopeful he will be able to hire for the slots that she is funded for,” said Jinkins. “I think we’re finally being able to catch up with that, and doing 21st century training is also helpful in bringing more people, in a more diverse community, into law enforcement.”
Author: Kienan Briscoe
One Response
My wallet is vibrating again… how about the democrats try fasting from passing any bills this session. They are too distracted by what’s going on federally to care about the citizens of WA State.
The speakers comment on taxes… basically passing something, sending it to the state Supreme Court and see what sticks is not leadership. We don’t want any new taxes.
Fasting helps with getting rid of fat and more health benefits.