Democrat legislators, who have lorded over the current legislative session without consulting their Republican counterparts and have ignored constant bipartisan overtures for meaningful reform of the governor’s emergency powers for the past two years, now laughably blame Republicans for their failure to pass any reforms of the governor’s powers.
Representative Sharon Shewmake (D – Bellingham) posted a tweet on Friday evening stating that a “Republican 
filibuster killed SB 5909 on emergency powers reform.” The obvious problem with this false statement is that there is no filibuster in the Washington State legislature. As a professor at Western Washington University, we would hope Representative Shewmake knew it is in the U.S. Senate where the filibuster has drawn recent attention, not the Washington State House of Representatives.
The (unfortunately) real story is that House Democrats, especially those who are facing tough re-election battles due to their far-Left voting records this November, did not want to go on record voting against the Republican’s real reform amendments to SB 5909 (the Democrats’ fake reform legislation which already passed the Senate). Thus, House Democrats suddenly stopped debate (which Democrats allowed to start at
1:00 AM) on the bill once Republican Chris Corry (Yakima) offered amendments which would have brought real reform to the state’s emergency powers law.
The sad story is that while Democrats have totally controlled the Washington Legislature they have passed – strictly along partisan lines – measures to increase the cost of gas by at least 50 cents a gallon (the “Inslee fuel standard”), an unconstitutional state income tax on capital gains, rioter-friendly “police reform” laws which have caused crime rates to skyrocket, and budgets which more than doubled the size and cost of state government under Jay Inslee’s reign (from $32.1 billion to over $65 billion in just nine years!).
That’s why it is so hypocritical and very disingenuous for Democrat legislators to suddenly blame Republicans for their failure to pass their own party’s fake reform bill. If the Democrats had the ability to jam through all these other liberal measures which the public opposed, then they certainly have the ability to pass real emergency reforms which the public is demanding.
Evidently Democrat legislators are taking their cue from Governor Inslee, who last week actually said with a straight face that it was the Republicans’ fault for why he is not ending his 2+ years of undemocratic one-man “emergency” rule despite never once consulting with Republican lawmakers over his unscientific partisan mandates and orders.
Democrats sure love to be in complete control of government, yet they just don’t want the accountability which goes along with the power.
