Opinion: I-2124, concerning the long-term-care payroll tax, is certified: Will lawmakers consider it?

Elizabeth Hovde of the Washington Policy Center asks: ‘will state lawmakers give I-2124 hearings and floor votes as Washingtonians are demanding, or will they continue to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic?’

Elizabeth Hovde asks: ‘will state lawmakers give I-2124 hearings and floor votes as Washingtonians are demanding, or will they continue to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic?’

Elizabeth Hovde
Washington Policy Center

An initiative to make the WA Cares program and its payroll tax of 58 cents for every $100 a worker earns optional for Washington state workers was certified on Thursday. That was a day before the House Health Care and Wellness Committee heard a bill about a problem in the state’s 2019 long-term-care law. Two other bills dealing with trouble in WA Cares also are in the mix for consideration this legislative session.

I’ll continue to dig into their details and watch them as they wind their way through the Legislature, but none of the proposals would do what voters might do next November: Allow all workers to say “no thanks” to Washington caring about them in this way. Instead, the legislative proposals attempt to help a problematic law and program look more palatable.

Because of program solvency issues, having other needs to pay for during one’s working years, wanting to direct one’s own health and financial choices, the low possibility of not needing long-term-care services and the higher probability of not being determined eligible for WA Cares’ inadequate lifetime benefit of $36,5000 — even after years of paying in — many people want out of the state-imposed program.

Read more about the many shortcomings of WA Cares in my policy paper titled, “New state-run program will not fix long-term-care crisis, nor should it offer peace of mind to workers forced to fund it.” I have another policy paper coming out next week about the program and what Initiative 2124 would do with it.

More than 400,000 Washingtonians signed I-2124, an initiative to the Legislature. Now that it’s been certified, lawmakers can pass the proposal, ignore it and see it go in front of voters, or send it to voters with their own WA Cares revamp.

Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, calls WA Cares a payroll-tax scheme and said Friday, “As has been widely reported, the WA Cares offers a limited benefit of little practical value to the people forced to pay for it. Making matters worse, the program is insolvent ― and will likely have to increase the amount of money taken out of people’s paychecks in order to stay afloat.”

Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML), another state-imposed social program that Washington workers pay into and that many will never have use for, had its tax rate double in a few short years. Also, it is primarily giving benefits to middle- and upper-income wage earners. PFML is not the safety net for people in need that many envisioned, and neither is WA Cares: It is a social program that harms workers’ budgets, including the budgets of low-income workers trying to make ends meet. They are forced to give a portion of their earnings over to fund the long-term-care services used, in many cases, by people with more resources and higher incomes.

Will state lawmakers give I-2124 hearings and floor votes as Washingtonians are demanding, or will they continue to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic? Stay tuned.

Elizabeth Hovde is a policy analyst and the director of the Centers for Health Care and Worker Rights at the Washington Policy Center. She is a Clark County resident.