Lewis County families are facing real challenges, and we need our representatives fighting for us, not providing cover for policies that make our lives harder.
Sen. John Braun's recent editorial dismissing concerns about the federal budget reconciliation act doesn't match the reality I'm hearing from neighbors across our community. In fact, it’s stuffed full of the same “partisan fiction” he claims to be against.
While he characterizes fair criticism as "fearmongering," the impacts on Lewis County are real, measurable and serious.
For one, our hospitals need stability instead of uncertainty to work properly. Rural clinics and critical access hospitals throughout Lewis County and neighboring areas are already hanging by a financial thread. At least two dozen rural hospitals in Washington are currently receiving emergency funding from the state's Distressed Hospital Grant program, just to make payroll.
The federal budget cuts Medicaid funding that keeps these rural facilities financially viable. In Washington alone, rural areas face $155 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade.
Braun points to $50 billion in "rural health transformation" funding as adequate compensation. But only half of that gets split equally among all 50 states over five years, meaning Washington might see $100 million annually. The other half is distributed at the discretion of federal administrators, based on unspecified bureaucratic criteria.
That $50 billion stop-gap simply isn't an adequate replacement for planning our health care future. Rural hospitals are already starting to shutter because they can’t financially justify operating without the guarantee of future funding.
Beyond the threat to our hospitals, the federal budget creates problems for people in Lewis County in two ways:
First, it adds higher copays for low-income Americans, and bureaucratic hurdles like eliminating temporary coverage while paperwork is processed and more frequent verification checks. That will kick working people off Medicaid even when they're already meeting requirements.
Second, it forces unemployed people to find work or lose coverage, pushing them into whatever low-wage jobs they can find just to keep their healthcare.
Neither approach addresses the real problem. Lewis County needs more jobs that pay enough to live on and provide health care benefits. Instead, these requirements trap people in a cycle where they work jobs that don't pay enough to afford private insurance but might pay just enough to lose Medicaid eligibility. This forces workers to choose between “poverty with health care” and “slightly less poverty with no health care.” It also forces employers to artificially limit the hours and pay of certain employees to help them keep their coverage, increasing hiring, churn and operational costs for businesses.
When we talk about affordability, we can’t ignore that Lewis County's poverty rate runs 30% higher than the state average, which means SNAP (also known as food stamps) benefits serve double duty in both supporting families and sustaining our retail sector. When people can afford food, they shop at our local stores. When they can't, businesses suffer.
The budget cuts SNAP benefits by approximately $56 per month for the average household and forces more than 130,000 Washingtonians to navigate new work requirements. In recent years, nearly 20% of Lewis County residents received SNAP benefits, which means these cuts will ripple through our local economy. They’ll affect everyone from single mothers trying to stay afloat in Mossyrock to owners of small grocery stores in Centralia who see their profits dip from their customers’ decreased buying power.
The federal budget also eliminates clean energy incentives. Regardless of your views on climate change, keeping energy dollars in Lewis County instead of sending them to multinational corporations makes economic sense. Lewis County has excellent wind potential that could generate local construction jobs, ongoing maintenance employment, and property tax revenue. But this budget cuts incentives for job-creating infrastructure like the Skookumchuck Wind Project in favor of staying dependent on the giant corporations that run the volatile fossil fuel markets.
What also makes economic sense is investing in infrastructure that gives us good roads, reliable internet and modern water systems. The state of our infrastructure determines whether businesses can operate efficiently and families can access jobs and services.
Sadly, the federal budget reduces transportation and infrastructure funding while demanding that states and communities pick up more of the tab. For a county that already struggles with property tax burdens, this means Lewis County taxpayers will pay more for fewer improvements, including projects like expanded high-speed internet that could transform our economic prospects.
Rural communities like ours have been struggling for decades. We need representatives who acknowledge those struggles and champion viable solutions instead of ones who dismiss legitimate concerns as partisan rhetoric.
It’s not partisan rhetoric to point out that the Congressional Budget Office estimates the top 1% of earners will receive $1.1 trillion in tax benefits from this budget while the amount being cut from Medicaid also happens to be $1.1 trillion. Or that popular provisions like no taxes on tips and overtime are set to expire in 2028, the same year health care cuts will hit hardest.
And it’s not partisan rhetoric to believe that temporary benefits for working families, coupled with permanent cuts in favor of tax breaks for the most wealthy, isn't fiscal responsibility.
Republicans like to dismiss concerns about federal cuts by pointing to their failed $ave Washington budget as proof that austerity works. But that budget would have been a disaster for Lewis County families. It would have frozen access to child care assistance, eliminated salary increases for teachers and state workers, lifted caps on college tuition and required cuts to agencies that provide services rural communities directly depend on.
The state budget that actually passed invests in education, maintains health care services and supports working families as much as possible amidst a massive shortfall and a lack of political will to properly tax the ultra-wealthy (none of whom live in Lewis County, by the way). Braun's celebration of austerity politics reveals a disconnect from the real challenges facing our community.
Our representatives should be advocating for Lewis County families in Olympia, not explaining why federal policies that hurt our community are actually good for us. Behind every budget line item are real families trying to build better lives in the community we all call home, and our politicians would do well to prioritize them over fealty to their party.
Zac Eckstein is chair of the Lewis County Democratic Party. Learn more about the party at https://lewiscountydemocrats.org.
