In the last year, one word has taken hold of American politics more than any other.
It has been featured in speeches on government budgets and championed by winning political campaigns.
This year in Washington, it will once again be at the center of budget discussions: “affordability.”
Washington’s 20th Legislative District lawmakers state Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, and state Reps. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, and Ed Orcutt, R-Kalama, paid a visit to CT Publishing for a pre-session briefing at the end of December to discuss their priorities heading into the state's 2026 legislative session.
Headed into the session, all three lawmakers are looking largely at the same issues they addressed in previous years: affordability, public safety and education.
But affordability will take the front seat as the legislators say the issue is the one they hear about most from constituents.
“As you talk to folks around our community, and frankly I hear the same thing from folks around the state,” Braun said, “affordability is a big issue: food, gas, housing, child care, health care. Regular folks are having a tough time affording those basics and keeping and making ends meet.”
The lawmakers expect much of the battle over affordability to come down to the nuances of this year's supplemental budget. After facing a massive budget deficit in the 2025 legislative session, the state passed sweeping tax increases widely referred to as the largest tax hike in state history. This year, the state still faces a $2.3 billion predicted shortfall as tax revenues continue to fall below expected levels.
In many ways, priorities for the 20th District and state Republicans have not changed from the last legislative session, as lawmakers insist that overspending by the state and mismanaged priorities are the source of the problem. The lawmakers during the meeting echoed a a familiar message — a return to basics.
“We’ve got to get back to just properly funding the basics,” Braun said. “Don't add a new Medicaid program. Don't expand access. Properly fund the basics. Don't add additional access to state-funded child care until you fully fund state funded child care.”
Once again, a no-new-taxes budget and revisiting the state's priorities will be the goal of the state's Republican Party and of the three 20th District lawmakers. However, the three lawmakers added that — months into the state's two-year budget — righting the ship will be harder than before.
“When we come out in March, when that budget gets passed, and we come out of session, we will be eight months, little over eight months into this biennial budget, which means you've got, you know, only two thirds as much time to make the cuts as you would have if you'd have passed a more responsible budget to begin with,” Orcutt said.
Some large opportunities for cost saving measures previously championed by Republicans have come and gone. One of the biggest places for savings chosen by Republicans last year was in collective bargaining agreements with state workers unions. The chance to negotiate has come and gone.
But Braun, Orcutt and Abbarno insist there are still plenty of opportunities for savings. Throwing out some ideas the party will be looking at headed into the session Braun brought up the idea of thinning the ranks of middle management positions in state government or in pulling back the state's higher education financial aid back to five years instead of the current six years.
“There are ideas out there, but they're not without some challenges, and not without some pain,’ Braun said. “When you let it go that long, you don't get back under control without time and really working at it.”
During the meeting, which was not long before Gov. Bob Ferguson announced his proposed budget for the upcoming session, Abbarno touched briefly on seriously considering Climate Commitment Act funds to fill gaps in the budget. Ferguson has since adopted a stance of doing just that; however, it's still unclear if the governor's priorities will match up with those of local Republican lawmakers.
“The allocation of Climate Commitment Act money, too, and whether that's a pause in the future,” Abbarno said. “We need to make sure that if we're going to use that money, we need to use it wisely and not waste it on certain projects that aren't going to make a difference.”
Other significant issues that will likely come up for the local lawmakers include both juvenile rehabilitation and mental health.
Green Hill School in Chehalis will likely once again be a hot topic after the Legislature killed two bills in the 2025 session meant to address overcrowding in the juvenile rehabilitation facility. Late in the session, a bill sponsored by Braun to transfer some adult residents to the Department of Corrections lost any bipartisan support as Republicans refused to support a Democrat-sponsored bill aiming to ramp up transitions from the facility into the community.
Cascade Community Healthcare is the subject of a mental health battle that will see the state look for funding streams for a new triage shelter model that takes in mental health patients for less than 24 hours at a time instead of sending the same patients to the local emergency room.
The session briefing is the final check-in with 20th District lawmakers who have already made appearances across Southwest Washington to discuss priorities with community members headed into the 2026 legislative session.
