My take away from the present political situation in Washington, D.C., and Olympia is that the old manner of special interests politics has got to go! Both our nation and our state are facing historic deficits built upon small favors to the special interests, especially public employee labor unions and in Washington, the Native American tribes’ special status with their casinos. They are not being taxed! We, the taxpayers of Washington state and the USA, are tired of special financial deals that benefit the few yet may hurt many of us.

47th District state Sen. Claudia Kauffman and Rep. Geoff Simpson have raised an enormous amount of money from the typical Democratic interest groups which would directly benefit from their re-elections. Among their top funders are state employee unions, SEIU and the tribal gaming industry. Kauffman works as a lobbyist for the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and surely manages to give a little here and a little there to the people who got her elected, including her own employer. Talk about a conflict of interests! She claims “charity fundraising” as her job, but I have in the past seen MANY photos of her meeting with former President Bill Clinton and other Democratic leaders. She was greatly involved in politics before her election to the state Senate four years ago. She has spent more of the taxpayers’ money by comparison to Sens. Rosemary McAuliffe or Tracey Eide, yet she claims to be fiscally conservative and for the taxpayer. Rep. Geoff Simpson is going to cost the taxpayer nearly $2 billion spread out over 10 years based upon his votes in the most recent session, so we definitely cannot afford to re-elect him to another two years. He also has a reputation in the 47th District and in Olympia of being hard to work with. This will negatively affect his ability to get things done for the 47th District and we the people deserve better!

The decisions that Kauffman and Simpson have made hurt families and small businesses regardless of what their campaign messages may tell us. Our households cannot continue spending beyond our means in such difficult economic times and neither should our legislators!

Erin Aboudara