Democrats Are Sharpening Their Knives

Jason Thiel

Democrats across King County are attacking working people. As ICE terror continues around the country and the Democrats nationally loudmouth their hollow anti-Trump fighting words heading into the midterms, Democrats in Seattle and King County are unleashing cuts to transit and the public services that working people rely on.

Seattle is looking at a $175 million deficit in 2027. In response, “Socialist” Mayor Katie Wilson is considering 5-10% cuts across all city departments. Seattle’s City Budget Office Director, Aly Pennucci, said that “all options are on the table” in regard to cutting programs and services.

Sound Transit is planning major cuts to the light rail expansion that workers voted for on the ballot ten years ago. Sound Transit is running a $34.5 billion budget shortfall over the next 20 years. The Sound Transit Board, which is made up of elected Democrats across the County including Katie Wilson and Seattle City Councilor Dan Strauss, is considering a proposal that will “delay [projects] until additional funding emerges” like the Ballard Light Rail Extension. It also includes “delaying” stations like Avalon, Boeing Access Road, and Graham St, as well as a number of park and ride expansions with no clear date as to when they will ever be built. 

Let’s call these what they are. These are cuts. The Democrats describe it as if billions in funding is going to magically fall out of the sky at some point to build the trains. 

But since when have Democrats kept their promises about funding programs that working people need? 

In contrast, they’re very diligent about keeping their promises to big business and funding programs that protect their interests. For instance, the police budget in Seattle has ballooned by $123 million SINCE George Floyd was murdered. $35 million of that increase came just last year, and was approved unanimously by the City Council. Seven of those City Councilors are still there today, including the so-called “progressive” Alexis Mercedes Rinck. Every year, there is always more money for cops, but never money for healthcare, housing, public transit, and childcare. That $123 million, if it were used for healthcare, could fund free clinics treating 100,000 people yearly. That’s roughly 1/7th of the Seattle population.

The rhetoric around these cuts to transit and public services is deceptive. Democrats are talking out two sides of their mouth. Sound Transit Vice Chair and Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello lamented that, “There are trade-offs, real trade-offs that all of us are contending with. No one is left unscathed, but we’re all committed to building out the full ST3 plan.”

For many reasons, Mello is being dishonest. But a key dishonesty here is claiming that nobody is left unscathed. The capitalists are left unscathed by these cuts. Amazon, Microsoft, and Boeing executives haven’t had to pay a single cent for the light rail expansions. And the Democrats are intent on keeping it that way.

There is plenty of wealth to pay for the trains. This region is home to some of the most profitable companies on the planet. Amazon and Microsoft, two of the region’s largest employers, made a combined nearly $180 billion in profit in 2025 alone. And Amazon’s profits have more than tripled in the last 5 years from $21 billion to $77 billion. Just Amazon’s 2025 profits alone could wipe away Sound Transit’s twenty-year budget deficit more than two times over. 

The Democrats on the King County Council could pass a tax on the rich to fund the trains. They could do even more than just close the deficit. They could make the trains free, and they could build them faster. Currently, some of these projects are scheduled for completion as late as 2046. 

Democrats held a transit town hall on May 5th where they spent the majority of the two hours justifying why these cuts were not actually cuts. They had all sorts of proposals for finding new revenue, including a rental car tax. But when they were asked about taxing the rich to fund the trains, they deflected. King County Councilmember and Sound Transit Board member Teresa Mosqueda cried that while she would love to tax the rich, doing so at the county level just threw up too many legal roadblocks. This is bullshit.

Seattle has already passed a tax on Amazon and big business. The roadblocks are not legal, they are political. The Amazon Tax, passed under the pressure of the George Floyd rebellion and independent socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, raises hundreds of millions every year. The George Floyd rebellion represented a moment where working class anger could have been directed toward a permanent break from the Democratic Party and the formation of a mass workers’ party. That is the pressure that forced the Seattle City Council to pass the Amazon Tax at the time.

This is the reality of the Democratic Party. The local Democrats are an appendage of the same party that is nationally funding genocide and war in Iran. The party that broke a railroad workers strike, failed to raise the minimum wage from a starvation $7.25/hr, and didn’t even make permanent the meager ACA subsidies that expired last year. The Democratic Party that Katie Wilson belongs to is the same one that Hakeem Jeffries leads.

The left needs to permanently, cleanly break from the Democrats. There is no pushing the Democrats to the left. There is no reforming them from the inside. We need a new party. We need a socialist party in Seattle and nationally. Seven of the nine seats on the Seattle City Council are up for re-election next year. Socialist organizations and working people need to unite behind an independent socialist slate of candidates in those elections. Not just in Seattle, but throughout King County to challenge these Democrats on the Sound Transit Board. 

Seattle is regarded as a progressive city due to victories like the $15 minimum wage and the Amazon Tax. But none of the credit for those victories should go to the progressive Democrat industrial-complex that churns out smiling backstabbers like Katie Wilson and Teresa Mosqueda. Those victories were not won by progressive Democrats, they were won under the threat of workers building a new party in Seattle and ending the careers of all these Democrat politicians. The major mistake of the leaders of these past movements, like Kshama Sawant, is not following through on that threat. even after winning these concessions. We need to break that cycle this time.