Our current state budget proposal eliminates Washington’s “Basic Health Plan.” This program subsidizes tens of thousands of lower-income residents’ health insurance.

These are not our “welfare moms.” These are our working poor. Families living on one or two minimum wage jobs, hoping not to fall ill, or become victims of unlucky accidents. Auburn has many of these families.

This is the cost of a few cents saved on cheap pop and bottled water. This is the cost of tax‑breaks for our rich families and individuals, among them, me and my family.

We are appropriately and vitally concerned about our children’s and grandchildren’s education. To learn, they and their classmates must be healthy and fed. Our community’s health and wealth depends on a well-educated, healthy, working community.

Emergency room visits cost more than basic health maintenance. We can no longer cut our children’s education, health, and many other services. There is not nearly enough “waste and inefficiency” to cover these cuts.

Our legislators, hard-working by my direct observation, did not run for office to, as one legislator put it, “decide who will die.”

We, Washington’s voters, are the state.

– Pat Montgomery, advocacy co-chair, Auburn Council of PTAs