Lawmakers warn of multi‑billion dollar shortfall, lay out competing approaches ahead of 2025 session

Four state legislators told a Working Forests Protection Association panel that the 2025 legislative session will be dominated by a large budget gap and hard choices about taxes, program cuts and priorities.

"This is not a recession," said Senator John Braun, the Senate Republican leader, arguing the shortfall stems in part from prior spending choices and obligations the legislature approved. Braun cited an Office of Financial Management estimate in the transcript as "somewhere in the 10 or $12,000,000,000 range over the 4 year." He urged colleagues to understand the sources of the gap and to avoid continuing to spend beyond recurring revenue.

Representative Drew Stokesberry, the House Republican leader, said the minority will push to focus on state problems and to ensure solutions are practical for Washington residents. "We have sky high inflation, sky high housing costs, sky high gas prices, sky high crime rates," he said, and argued legislators should prioritize Washington's problems rather than national debates.

Democratic leaders on the panel voiced a different set of priorities. Representative Larry Springer, House Democratic deputy majority leader and a member of the House Ag and Natural Resources Committee, said preserving funds created in prior legislation is key: his 2021 bill established a fund now used by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for wildfire preparation, response and recovery. He warned that in a tighter revenue environment that fund will have a "bull's eye" on it and said preserving it is a priority.

Senator Sharon Shoemake stressed the paramount duty of the state to fund K‑12 and early learning: "I have a school district that ran out of paper, and the parents were coming and donating that paper," she said, urging stability for programs where cuts would be traumatic.

Panelists discussed the composition of the cited deficit. Braun described roughly half the four‑year shortfall as obligations created by past policy decisions, including negotiated collective bargaining increases and programs that have been approved but not yet implemented. He said the current biennium's spending was about $72,000,000,000 while revenue was about $67,000,000,000, and that reserves and federal money had been used to cover earlier gaps.

On remedies, lawmakers differed. Braun and Stokesberry argued for careful program review and limiting new ongoing spending, saying raising taxes should be "an absolute last resort." Springer and Shoemake warned that cutting critical services could have severe impacts and urged protecting early learning and wildfire preparedness where possible.

Moderator Tom Davis also pledged to work with legislators to defend DNR funding, saying he would "work with you all to ensure that $125,000,000 for in DNR's budget remains intact." The statement was a commitment of advocacy rather than a formal legislative action.

Next steps: legislators said they will finalize caucus priorities in the weeks before the January session and return to committees to translate those priorities into bills and budget proposals.