- Grab your ballot.

We're talking about everything you need to know before you vote in the upcoming November election, including the contentious race for Washington's fifth congressional district.

- I don't support increasing taxes on social security recipients like my opponent apparently does.

- Wow, I don't see that as a tax raise.

What I see that is tax fairness.

- Plus, hear from candidates in the other top Eastern Washington races and learn about the tax measures on the ballot.

Now on At Issue.

Thank you for joining us for this at issue election special.

I'm Dana Haynes.

We're going to hear more from the congressional debate between Representative Michael Baumgartner and challenger Carmela Conroy a little bit later in the show.

But first, let's talk about the local positions on the ballot for Spokane County voters.

Perhaps getting the most attention on the county level is the race for prosecuting attorney.

Republican Preston McCollum currently holds the seat.

He was appointed after Larry Haskell retired in 2025.

He faces independent Danny Tarkenton, a former county deputy prosecutor.

Here's a segment from our recent debate with the two candidates.

- The prosecutor's office stated mission is to protect the public by providing competent and ethical prosecution, superior victim services, and seeking justice in every case.

Do you think the office is currently doing a good job of fulfilling that mission?

And what, if anything, would you change?

- I absolutely do think that the office is doing a good job of fulfilling that mission.

That is a very important mission that we have a whole host of dedicated public servants that work in that.

We have 11 victim witness advocates in that unit that provide victim services.

It's certainly not enough for the volume that we have or for the needs of the community, but we have incredibly caring people that provide those services to our crime victims.

At any given time, if anybody's been following government, you know, offices and especially prosecuting attorney's offices, you know that we're down in staffing.

And so at any point we're down 20 to 30% of criminal attorneys, and that's not unique to Spokane.

But what I can say is that of the individuals that are in that office, they're incredibly dedicated, they're incredibly passionate about providing services and enforcing the law.

And we have an amazing group of attorneys that come in and day in and day out and work very hard for this community.

So yes, we are doing a good job of fulfilling that.

Can we do better?

Can we utilize more resources?

Absolutely.

And so that's something that I've been fighting and advocating for every day in this position.

- Danny, same question.

- I think that our office is trying to fulfill that mission.

I think that prosecutors deeply want to be able to fulfill this when it comes to public safety, ethics.

But again, it's all about kind of the work environment.

So our deputy prosecutors are extension of the elected.

So that's why it's really important we want to elect officials who support providing ethical prosecution to apply the facts to cases and to reassess those cases as necessary once material facts come about.

It is about resources.

It is about funding, of course.

And while my opponent does mention that it's not unique to Spokane when it comes to the funding, but it also very much is whether or not do you want to work somewhere.

Some people like to ask themselves, "I'm okay with the funding as long as I enjoy where I work.

And we can't seem to find the personnel to fill these spots regardless of whether or not there is less pay or more pay because my opponent did increase the pay, but yet we still can't seem to fulfill the staffing."

So my hope is that we can get to that point.

- Rebuttal, go ahead.

- And again, that answer comes from a position of frankly a lack of knowledge.

We have individuals in this position that, again, they're striving day in and day out to provide a quality service to this community.

And in terms of pay and staffing, as my opponent said, the deputies are an extension of the prosecuting attorney and that's incredibly important because the prosecuting attorney has to understand what the needs of the office are, and the prosecuting attorney has to understand what your people are going through in order to understand how to advocate for them.

And that's something that I can do and have been doing very effectively.

- So part of this leadership role is managing a budget and large staff as the county faces hard financial times.

Ahead of 2027, the commission will need to close an expected deficit of between 20 to 30 million.

How would you go about deciding where in the office to make cuts if given that directive?

And Danny, we'll start with you.

- Sure.

Well, it starts by having to open up those referrals to restorative courts and diversion.

It's pretty much anytime somebody is incarcerated, it costs about $80,000 to incarcerate them.

But if we actually utilize these restorative courts again, then the likelihood of them not coming back decreases as low as 14%.

But by doing that also, it doesn't cost as much for them to be there.

So WISP data has shown us that it costs about $6,000 to have somebody complete a drug program, whereas somebody who's incarcerated every single day for 30 days is about $7,600.

So by opening up these restorative courts and diversion referrals, again, we could actually reduce some of that funding.

Again, I'm all about being efficient and effective when it comes to prosecution.

So if there are ways that we can be more efficient about that, such as assessing our misdemeanor courts, then we can now reduce some of that and then reduces the load for the felonies.

And then again, overall in time, it will save us money.

- Preston.

- So the office is already operating at a incredible efficiency rate.

And again, that statement that incarcerating somebody costs $80,000, again, that's a misunderstanding of where those funds come from and who pays for them.

If somebody is sent to prison, then that's paid for at the state level, not at the county level, and it won't impact the county budget.

What we have presently in our jail are individuals who are violent offenders by and large.

Of the about 500 local folks sitting in our jail right now, 97 of them are there under sentence.

So they've been sentenced in a municipal district court or they're serving a local sentence on a felony.

But of those numbers, we have 300 of them are class A and class B felonies.

And a good portion of those, about 50 plus, are child sex offenses, rape offenses.

Those are class A sex offenses, individuals who are a danger to the community, and about 30 of them are there for homicide.

So again, the costs that are occurring here are not due to a lack of efficiency.

It's simply a cost of protecting the community from violent offenders.

- All right.

Danny, you have a rebuttal?

- Yeah.

So actually a lot of that data is a lot of people that are in that county jail, not only does it cost about $58 million a year to operate our county jail, it does cost about $80,000 per person.

But also a lot of what's taking up the jails right now is the county jail are pretrials, so people that are waiting to be seen for trial.

So I understand what my opponent is trying to say here, but again, it is about being efficient because if you can reduce the recidivism rate, then there are going to be less likely for people to commit crimes again and overall reduce the volume.

It'll save us money.

- Another contested race at the county level is for Spokane County auditor.

After almost 30 years in office, current auditor Vicki Dalton is retiring at the end of this year.

Up for the position as current Spokane City Council Member, Michael Cathcart, and a local accounting professional, Callie G. I sat down with each of them earlier this week.

Here is part of our conversation.

Elections, election process, it remains a very crucial and talked about topic amongst voters across the country, really.

What are your priorities if and when you get elected to this position?

- Well, first and foremost, it's confidence building.

I want every single eligible voter to know that when they cast their ballot, it is going to be handled securely and it's going to be counted accurately.

And to me that we can really demonstrate how we are doing that by, I think, opening up elections more than we ever have, really showing the public how the process works from A to Z. When I came into the city council, none of our committees, study sessions, any of those meetings were streamed.

By a combination of advocacy on my part and some of the COVID mandates making some shifts a requirement, we were able to start filming all those committees.

By comparison, the canvassing board, which is the determinating committee of a lot of the election outcomes, is not streamed.

It's not really accessible.

So I want to do that.

I want to stream the logic and accuracy testing, which is the machine testing to verify that the machine is accurate at the beginning of the election, as well as stream the post-election audits that we're conducting at the end to verify that ballots were in fact counted accurately.

- What you did do and did as a city council member is very different than being the county auditor.

How does that job though translate?

I mean, you have different role responsibilities.

It is vastly different.

Absolutely.

So how is your experience now going to translate?

- Yeah.

So the role of county auditor is really a leadership and management position.

And I think throughout my career as well as on council, there has been just a number of opportunities for me to lead, to manage, to oversee really complex problems.

We've had a number of very complex municipal budgets that I've worked through, financing as part of some of the regional committees that I'm a part of.

I currently chair the regional health district, the Northeast Public Development Authority, and then I'm past chair now of the Growth Management Steering Committee.

And all of that has really put me at the table for major economic development decisions and public health decisions, but also budgetary finance and personnel and some really challenging personnel decisions, in fact, that have had to be made over the last few years.

- The auditor's office obviously oversees the election at a time when trust in the electoral process is being questioned by a chunk of our population.

What specific steps would you take to try to really lock down public confidence in our election process here in Spokane County?

- It's a great question.

I think that we have one of the most secure election processes in the state.

We can go back and look at our post-election audits and recounts and really see how secure and lockdown that system is.

I would invite anyone who has doubts and questions to go and participate in election observing.

I think if anyone is to walk into that office and see the chain of custody and the way that that process runs and the incredible workers, the employees who have been doing this work for decades, it is a very, very secure and accurate system.

And so my approach would be to continue to invest in the systems that we know work well and make them work better.

- Your background, your expertise is in accounting, finance, compliance, record keeping.

Those are key qualifications in the auditor's office.

But is there a specific problem or process in the auditor's office that you see that your accounting experience can help with?

- Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things that I have spent my career learning is how to break down really complex financial issues and into ways that my clients can understand.

And also making really informed data-driven decisions.

And so that's really where my accounting background comes in.

I'm really used to asking the hard questions, asking how do we know that these numbers are right?

What kind of controls are in place?

And if something doesn't line up to what we expected, how do we go about reconciling that?

And so I really plan to bring my accounting and finance education and my experience working professionally in the field to make sure that Spokane County residents can really understand where our tax money is going, how it's being spent, and where it's coming from, where most of that revenue comes from.

- For the position of Spokane County clerk, voters are deciding between Republican Dave Lucas, a Cheney Municipal Court administrator, and Democrat Elliot Robinson, a healthcare business intelligence analyst.

Here is part of their conversation about their qualifications with our friends at the Spokesman Review.

- So I studied pure math in my undergrad program and came back to Spokane.

I bartended for a little while and then started working at CHAS Health as a business intelligence analyst.

So I work in healthcare, not in law, but there are so, so many parallels between the work that I specifically do in my job and what I think will benefit the clerk's position.

So in business intelligence, I build integrations, I work with data management and reporting and workflow optimization and a bunch of different kinds of roles where we're taking in a archaic, clunky document database and bridging that and the public and providers, professionals, administrators, many different audiences.

So I understand what sensitive data, high throughput, high stake situations, and how to wield technology to do that.

- I run the Cheney Municipal Court now.

So have fair amount of experience running courts.

Prior to that, a little over two decades of service in the Marine Corps, working in all levels of executive leadership.

Started obviously as a lieutenant, worked my way through and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel.

When I left the Marine Corps, I was an acting commanding officer of a regiment, roughly 2,500 people, basically 30 Howitzers, each of a value of about $16 million, over a hundred vehicles, a multimillion dollar budget.

So well positioned and really particularly well-trained to transition to this position.

And it really is a logical next move to move from being a municipal court administrator, really the lowest level of regional court, moving to kind of a mid-level.

And I know probably a lot of people aren't super familiar, but you've got obviously municipal at the bottom, really the different jurisdictions, district kind of in the middle, managing some of the more serious cases and some of the civil charges.

And then this position is to run for the superior court and be the process owner in the court.

No vested interest in the outcome of a case, but the owner of the process of the case.

And so that's one of the things that really uniquely prepared me to move to this very logical next step.

- Many school districts in the area have levy measures on the ballot this year.

Let's take a look at a couple of them.

Spokane Public Schools is asking voters to continue an expiring educational programs and operation levy.

The levy tax rate is about $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

The Central Valley School District has a similar ask on the ballot, a replacement educational programs and operations levy that would cost homeowners about $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

Both districts say these levies are needed to fund various programs not fully funded by the state, like special education, nurses, counselors, music, athletics, and extracurricular activities.

A big topic for voters statewide is the so-called millionaires tax passed by the state legislature earlier this year.

It imposes a 9.9% tax on household incomes above $1 million.

The first payment is due in 2029, but initiative 645 could repeal the millionaire's tax before it even begins.

Mike McClanahan from TVW's The Impact spoke to a supporter and an opponent of the measure.

Here's part of those interviews.

- Yes on Initiative 645 because voters deserve the truth.

This is an income tax with a million dollar threshold and it is designed to be expanded to every Washingtonian, whether you're a truck driver or a hairdresser or a retired teacher, this tax is coming for your income.

And we know this for a few reasons.

Olympia lawmakers voted to easily expand it without requiring a vote of the people, right?

And they didn't ask us to put it in the first time.

Secondly, they made changes to longstanding protections for public employee retirement checks and they left social security vulnerable.

Why would you do that for someone who doesn't make a million dollars a year unless your intent is to expand it?

And then finally, the money that's coming in from the tax as it currently stands with the high threshold isn't enough to meet their planned spending.

There's already lawmakers calling to lower that threshold, and we heard crickets from legislative leaders about that.

So all these things together show us they put all the pieces in place to lower this, to expand it to every Washingtonian.

And that's my concern, quite frankly, is that they're telling us it's only for a certain class of people and it's not you.

Don't worry about it.

Pay no attention to the man behind the screen.

But the reality is they put all the pieces in place to expand it to all of us and I think voters deserve the truth.

- Voters are rejecting Initiative 645 and voting no in November because we know this is an attempt by a handful of the richest people in our state to give themselves a $13 billion tax break while cutting investments in healthcare and education.

And that's not a campaign soundbite, it is just fact.

If you look at page nine of our Washington State Voters Guide, right there in black and white, it says, "If passed, this measure will reduce funding in K-12 education, higher education including universities and community colleges and human services, primarily healthcare."

That's right there on the ballot.

- So the advocates for repealing the new tax on high earners, you know, tax on over a million dollars in income per year argue that really the money goes to the state's general fund, which is the most flexible funding source of the operating fund.

They say there's no guarantee this money's going to schools or childcare.

What's your response to that argument?

- Well, you know, nearly 90% of our state's budget is spent on things like healthcare, education and human services.

So if we build, if we blow a $13 billion hole in our state's operating budget, that is going to come directly out of those things.

There's no way to balance the budget and take $13 billion from the budget without cutting investments in healthcare and education.

- There are two additional statewide initiatives on the ballot.

I638 concerns transgender students in sports.

The measure would prohibit students it defines as biologically male from competing in certain school athletic activities intended for female students only.

It would require verification of biological sex by girls' healthcare providers.

Supporters say a yes vote protects fairness in girls' sports.

Opponents say the sex verification puts up more barriers for girls.

Initiative 001 concerns the parental rights of public school children in Washington.

Supporters say the measure would restore a parent's access to their child's records.

Opponents say it endangers vulnerable child abuse victims by requiring schools to hand over sensitive information.

Let's switch gears now and talk about the open positions in the Washington State Legislature.

In District three, which represents much of the city of Spokane, you'll see incumbent Democrat Natasha Hill and Republican challenger Tony Kiepe on the ballot in position one.

And Democrat Luc Jasmine III and Republican Natalie Polson in position two.

All four gathered recently for a conversation at Spokane Public Radio.

Here's a portion of that interview focused on the housing challenges in Spokane.

- Look, we all can agree we need housing.

Right now you talked about downtown.

I would love to expand on pavement to people.

So really working with developers to convert office space into housing that fits all budgets.

We have so much vacant land right along I-90.

Over 500 homes were displaced, many of them black and brown folks.

I would love to be able to work with folks to revitalize that area and bring housing there as well.

we need housing across every price point.

We have to be able to move people through their first time homebuyers or even before that, renting and then buying a first home and then moving through.

We have to work on regulations.

We are so overregulated in this state that permitting takes forever.

It's expensive and we keep adding things to it.

I mean, just the natural gas alone adds immediately at least $10,000 onto a new build that could take somebody out of a first time homebuyer right there just with that 10,000.

I love to see a thriving downtown.

District three is downtown.

You would get all the homeless people.

We've got the Lower South Hill, we got all the way up to the Francis.

So we have a good diversity in district three.

But let's get people incentivized to come back downtown.

like.

Like Natalie was saying, our permitting process has taken too long a restaurant.

I'm I love I go to all the time.

It's taken them four months to get a permit to come in so they can expand the restaurant.

That's way too long.

They're paying rent.

Look at housing.

How long does it take?

Take them to get a permit approved.

we actually have land we can utilize, but some of it's just not ready for sale.

People don't want to get in there and prep it.

So Spokane low income consortiums who brought this bill forward, actually my opponent in the primary, former City Council president Ben Stockard, got to work with him and his crew on this, and we got it over the finish line our second year, it took a lot of work, and it took working with folks across the state and on the West Side to see how is this going to work for Spokane versus how this might work over in Tacoma or in the Tri-Cities area.

- And for voters in Spokane Valley and much of Northeast Spokane County, District four features two Republicans, Trent Maier and Hillary Pham in position one, and Republican Rob Chase and Democrat Rob Tupper in position two.

Here's part of their conversation with Spokane Public Radio.

Each was asked what their priorities would be for the upcoming legislative session.

when I'm on the state and tribal committee, state government and tribal, and I think voter integrity is very important to, I don't know that our, our, our voter rolls are really very clean.

So I think, no matter who's who, you're serving, whatever party, I think, I would like to say, even if I knew it would serve the Democrats, I would.

Truth is, truth matters, you know, and honesty too.

So maybe it might go against.

I would still hope I'm of that caliber that I would, demand integrity in our voter rolls.

I do know that, we're facing a budget crisis.

I did read all 101, 108 pages of the, millionaire's tax bill, and I didn't find anything offensive there.

I know that there's a lot of constituents I've spoken with or, you know, potential forced into.

It's I've spoken with who are convinced it's going to be a million and a half 1,000,000.25 million, and then, you know, $45 and we'll all be taxed.

And in the bill it says, this dollar amount is going to be increasing with inflation or a metric that says it's moving upwards, not downwards.

And it also provides relief to, those that have have lower income through our tax credit, refundable tax credit and then the business and operations taxes look like these change from, business.

It makes less than $250,000.

Would not even be required to follow there being no tax.

budget issues are certainly, something coming up.

But, you know, the state's experienced two years in a row of some of the largest tax increases ever.

And quite honestly, we're probably facing a third because the majority party has not quite got their their hands wrapped around this.

Nobody, I think, in the state can really blame the Republican Party for much of that at state level.

Right.

So the fourth legislative district as a border district to Idaho, it has some very unique, circumstances.

For that reason, we have the alternative option and competitiveness of gas, and fueling up in Idaho.

So, most people can save at least a dollar per gallon, and that adds up very quickly if people are going out of their way to fill up in Idaho.

And, I think that is very telling that taxes should not be driving consumer behavior differently, behavior tax policy.

that it's not the role of, tax policy.

So I think that for me, I really want to have a really candid conversation with everyone that this affects a lot of people's lives, because if you can't drive around and commute, you can't get to your job, you can't afford to take your kids to school.

You know, it just is a ripple effect of affecting working families lives.

Let's hear from the candidates in one more region.

District six represents part of northwest Spokane and the West Plains.

of Northwest Spokane and the West Plains.

In position one, Democrat Michelle Kelso faces Republican Alan Nolan.

Here is a segment from their recent debate here at CCP's.

Here is a segment from their recent debate here at KSPS.

- Yes, I will absolutely be in the minority, but throughout my career, I've been able to work with others, even if they don't necessarily share my views or share my goals, because a lot of times we may share the same goal.

For example, I was at the Climate Forum for Gonzaga just recently, and I spoke with the audience there about how I'm happy to see fossil fuel reduction use in, use reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

My reasons may be different for it, but if we share the same goals, we can achieve that.

- Well, one of the things is it's in the job description, representative.

That's literally what I will be there to do.

I was always known during my military career for my high levels of integrity.

So when I say I will listen to everyone and I will represent everyone fairly, that is what I'm going to do.

I see that there are a lot of rules that are good for the west side.

They're not good for here.

We have a lot of farmers that... We have a lot of rural areas.

People drive farther and we just have different needs from the west side.

- And in position two, former Spokane City council member and Republican Jonathan Bingel faces Democrat Julia Payne.

Here's a segment from Spokane's Spiciest Candidate Forum, hosted by Range Media ahead of the August primary.

- So yeah, very regressive setup.

And over the past many years, there have been at least 10 different bills that proposed various forms of income tax that have been shut down by the voters.

So you have spoken your opinion on that.

The reality is the use style tax that we have right now falls more heavily on those with a smaller income.

So we need to, if not evaluate an income tax, we need to evaluate some taxes that do affect resources because the social commitment is that you are making use of roads and police and all of these things that taxes pay for.

If you are making more money or have more resources or have a second house, you're making more use of those resources.

And therefore, that is where the use tax should be, not on the everyday items that we have to buy.

- All right.

So our budget has more than doubled in the last 10 years.

And just for the record, I'm going to be 40 this year and we haven't had a Republican governor in my lifetime.

So if there's something pro - a problem with the tax structure, I would say maybe it's time we look at a different set of leadership in Olympia to bring about something that's more fair and equitable.

Now, areas that I think that we... Got me.

Areas I think we need to be looking at, I think it's very important for us to be investing in more auditors at the state level so that we can be searching for waste, fraud, and abuse because there is a rampant amount of waste, fraud and abuse in government.

- As promised, we wanted to dedicate time this evening for you to hear from the candidates running in Washington's fifth congressional district.

This is a rematch from two years ago.

First term representative Republican Michael Baumgartner faces Democratic challenger Carmella Conroy.

The two kicked off the general election debate cycle with a matchup hosted by the Spokesman Review and KSPS PBS.

Here's that debate moderated by Spokesman Review Reporter Emery Dinman.

- First, Mr.

Baumgartner, the American West has been continually and increasingly devastated by wildfires in recent years.

Most recently on August 1st, when three fires ripped through communities in and around Spokane.

What role, if any, does Congress have in helping to prepare or protect the West for future fires?

- Well, thank you.

Yeah, we've all experienced fires in Eastern Washington, but nothing like we experienced in these terrible a- attacks of, of last month.

And I really appreciate our community coming together and the work that we've done in Congress working with Governor Ferguson, Senator Cantwell, Mayor Lisa Brown, you know, and when we're doing that, we're not Republicans or Democrats.

We're just folks trying to do what's right.

Now, we need to bring our fuel loads down in our Western forests.

I'm the son of a forestry professor and a nephew of a smoke jumper, and I worked for the Forest Service in The summers when I was in college.

And we have an unbalanced forest.

And so we have some important legislation that would help bring down fuel loads.

And then of course, we're going to do everything we can to support FEMA recovery support.

I was pleased when President Trump gave FEMA support to the floods in Western Washington.

I was actually in the White House, the Christmas party when that was going on, advocated for that.

And also just want to give a quick shout out to Waltworthy - And the - Generous donation he has made.

It's just been great for our community.

Ms.

- Conroy.

- Be super important to restore funding to FEMA.

And I will note that Mr.

Baumgartner voted twice to keep FEMA from getting money that should have been available for emergency services and allowed that money to instead be redirected to ICE so that they could put that into funding detention centers for immigrants.

That money needed to be available for emergency services.

The El Nino was forecast well in advance.

We've seen about every three years we don't get summer, we get smoke season.

And unfortunately about 800 of our neighbors lost their homes here in Spokane.

And it wasn't just here in Spokane.

In Rosalia, there were fires.

In Walla Walla, there's a fire that's ongoing that's threatening their watershed.

We have got to restore funding for climate change.

We've got to do what we can to stop our worsening climate and weather, and we've got to restore funding for FEMA.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 seconds.

- Well, I'll finish my shout out to Walt Worthy for his very generous donation to our community.

We know a lot of folks are suffering right now from those fires.

Our office is doing a lot of work on it and just really appreciate everybody in the community for stepping out.

The toughest times in Eastern Washington bring out the best of these folks and this is going to be an ongoing issue.

Certainly I'll do everything I can do to support folks suffering from these fires, but really I just appreciate the community.

- Ms.

Conroy, 30 seconds.

- So just again, the previous congresses put forth money, authorized money for FEMA's use to respond to emergency situations.

Mr.

Baumgartner used his Article one powers to hand that money back to DHS to use it in law enforcement and detention, basically creating concentration camps rather than being able to respond to emergencies.

And that is a crying shame.

- Ms.

Conway, you're going to be answering this next question first and it's a question tailored to you.

You've suggested raising or eliminating the payroll tax cap to address the funding gap for Social Security.

By 2032, the Social Security Fund is expected to no longer have enough money to pay out full benefits resulting in a projected 22% cut in payments.

For those that don't know, the Social Security payroll tax rate of 6.2% is only paid on the first $184,500 of earned income annually.

I apologize folks, it's complicated.

And if you earn more money beyond that, you don't pay more in taxes.

You have suggested raising or eliminating that tax cap, but that would only eliminate, even if you got rid of the cap entirely, two thirds of that gap.

Would you raise taxes on working class Americans to cover the rest?

- Wow.

I don't see that as a tax raise.

What I see that is tax fairness.

My nieces and nephews are firefighters, corrections officers, public school teachers, and they pay a 6.2% social security tax on 100% of their incomes.

But that means that an attorney, I got nothing against attorneys, I used to be one, but that means that an attorney who makes three quarters of a million dollars a year pays less than 2% of his income towards social security.

I would scrap the cap so that very high income wage earners are paying the same percentage of their income into social security as low income wage earners.

The other thing that I would do is note that Mr.

Baumgartner twice voted to do things that undercut the Social Security Trust Fund.

One of the things that he did was vote to give a tax breaks to high income Social Security recipients and those tax breaks take up to $6,000 per person out of the Social Security Trust Fund.

The other - Ms.

Conroy, - That's timing.

And - That's all I got for right now.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 seconds.

- Yeah.

One of the really great things we did in Congress this year is we gave 88% of seniors about a $6,000 deduction on Social Security.

You heard President Trump talk about no taxes on Social Security.

It's not exactly that.

It's about 88% of folks.

So I don't support increasing taxes on Social Security recipients like my opponent apparently does.

I do think we may need to look not at current members because it's for current folks, Social Security, it's a take a promise, but for new folks, we may need to look at the age eligibility as people are living longer, but not raising taxes.

- And Ms.

Conroy, I do want to follow up.

Your answer addressed the tax cap, but that would only, if you eliminated that, cover two thirds of the funding gap.

How would you cover the last third?

- I'm not sure that's right, but one of the things that I would do would be to take the people who are currently being held in concentration camps for immigrants.

Aside from the people who've been accused of crimes, everybody else should be returned to their communities and the jobs that they were working if they had jobs to return to and had work permits because immigrants never take out of social security, but if they're working, they all contribute to it.

And the group that calculates the tax - Ms.

Conroy, - That's time.

Mr.

Baumgartner, would you like another 30 seconds?

- Well, social security is extremely important as a safety net to folks been working to have that sense of security.

We need to protect it.

Again, maybe looking at the age for new folks going on to the program while maintaining the promise to folks there.

And then while social security does have this described fund, it also is just a line item in the budget.

So we need to make sure it's a priority to fund.

And I'm sure Congress will.

It will take a bipartisan approach to do that, but I'm confident Congress will be able to do so.

- I do want to ask Mr.

Baumgartner, you have run ads this year saying, "No matter what scary stories politicians try to tell, Social Security and Medicare are not getting cut.

Social Security and Medicare are sacred promises to our seniors and I'll defend them always."

Again, by 2032, Social Security is headed towards a funding gap.

What have you done in the last two years to defend that sacred promise?

- So again, Social Security very important.

While again, it's described as a trust fund, it is just a line item in the budget.

So as Congress is building budgets and bipartisan fashion, that's something that they will have to fund.

One of the things we've done this year that I think has been extremely important is we've actually strengthened Medicaid and food stamps by saving money, by making sure that illegal, so who shouldn't be in the country are off those programs and then putting work requirements on those programs.

- Excuse me.

- Go - Ahead.

- The American people are very generous, but they don't like to be bamboozled and scammed.

And if you have seen what's gone on in Minnesota and some of these places when there's been rampant waste fraud and abuse in some of our social safety net programs, people are rightfully outraged.

So again, work requirements for folks to be on assistance is something that saves money and is very popular with American people.

Again, we're generous, but we want to make sure that people are putting forth an effort.

And both those measures we've taken have strengthened those programs and ultimately the kind of steps we need to make to make sure these programs are around.

- It's not just a line item in a budget.

It's something that every working person pays into and deserves to have the benefit of for a dignified retirement at the end of their working lives.

And Mr.

Baumgartner is, I believe, intentionally mixing up different pots of money and different sorts of benefits to try to confuse people about what he's done to undercut access to social security.

And we'll deal with more in the next question.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, you have on several occasions expressed support for Haitian asylum seekers living in your district saying that they are important contributing members of our community.

And while you believe that the president should have the authority to revoke their protective status, you hope that he wouldn't at this time.

What have you done in Congress to try to keep these people in the country?

And what would you say to members of your own party here in Spokane who are disappointed that they haven't been deported more quickly?

- Well, we need to have, thank you for the important question.

And there's a lot of folks that are important parts of our community that are immigrants.

My wife and I have done extensive work with some of the Afghan folks that we worked with in Hellman Province to try to support them coming to the US.

And we have a lot of folks here from the Ukrainian community and others.

The important thing is we need to get Congress making laws on these issues.

And one of the challenges of every time there's an executive action, like when President Obama did DACA or when there's a asylum granted, then it takes apart one part of the forcing function to try to get Congress to work together on what's a very complex set of policies.

And so when it comes to immigration, one of the challenges there have been while you haven't had to have comprehensive immigration reform is that it has taken some of the key ingredients and stakeholders out of it.

So I want to see Congress make these rules, not have them done by executive order, and that's where we need to be on these projects.

- Ms.

Conroy, 30 seconds.

- Which is very nice in theory, but the way that Mr.

Baumgartner has used his votes is that he, after these executive orders have dropped, he goes running around after them to turn them into legislation.

That is not what Article one is supposed to do.

What we should be doing in Congress is making sure that the executive acts according to the law.

And so instead of bragging at a rip on group event that you've had a secret lunch with former AG Pam Bondi and the White House to support their immigration policies, you want to be holding them accountable.

- Ms.

Conroy, in 2024, you supported a bill that would've significantly increased funding for border security, made it possible to more quickly deport migrants and give the Department of Homeland Security more authority over asylum cases.

In a forum this summer, you said Congress needs to dismantle and behead the Department of Homeland Security.

What changed?

- I don't remember supporting that bill, Emory.

- The bipartisan immigration bill.

- Okay.

Senator Lankford's bill, which President Trump said that encouraged Republican members of Congress to oppose.

Okay.

Yeah.

The difference would've been then that had Congress funded and allowed DHS to actually reform immigration so that there was a speedier process for people to get through the system, that would've been great.

What happened instead is that the Republican members of Congress and decided that they were not going to solve the problem even though there was bipartisan support for that law.

But I do not believe that that included making DHS the largest law enforcement agency in the country, that it would've required all of our border security assets to be pulled away from the border to terrorize members of our communities who've lived here for decades.

I oppose that.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 seconds.

- Well, there was absolute debacle and lawlessness at the border.

A lot of that has been fixed.

I always haven't liked the way that ICE has carried out some of their operations.

I was concerned with what happened in Minnesota, but by and large, we went from 15 to 20 million people entering the country unlawfully to now zero getaways the last 16 months.

So the main reason that Republicans were put in charge was to clean up the border issue and all the fentanyl and child trafficking that was going on.

And I think largely it's been successful.

Again, we need to have compassion.

We need to be dealing with these cases.

We need to need country of laws.

- Ms.

Conroy, the cost of living has only gotten more expensive compared to real wages in the last two years.

What should Congress do to help Americans who are struggling to make ends meet?

- Stop the trade chaos.

That would be a big one right then and there.

It would also boost incomes because our farmers could potentially regain the markets that they've lost in this chaos that's happened over the last almost two years.

We could also stop the war in Iran.

That has choked off a couple of important trade routes, especially for oil and boosted prices for oil, gas, groceries, fertilizer.

I was out in Ritzville this last weekend and diesel was $7.20 a gallon.

There was a guy behind me in the grocery store lot who admired my hybrid pickup truck.

And I told him I got almost 50 miles to the gallon.

H said, "Oh, I'm getting 18.

I haven't been able to fill my 30 gallon tank in months."

So those prices are hitting people hard.

Congress has the power to stop it by using the power of the purse and taking back power over terrorists, restoring the tariff regime that was in place when Mr.

Baumgartner took office.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, admit it.

- Thank you.

This Congress has done a lot to try to make life more affordable, particularly for working families.

We passed legislation on no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on interest on American-made cars.

We talked about the support we gave for seniors for the $6,000 on average for folks on social security.

One of my favorite things we did was create child investment accounts where every new child born in America gets seated with $1,000 for equivalent of a Roth IRA.

And even if you don't have a newborn or a child under four that's eligible for that, you should look at establishing that for your child under age 18.

Another great thing we did to make life more affordable is we actually passed the $1,700 essentially education voucher credit that every student in America could use for public school, private school, charter schools, home schools or tutoring.

The challenge with that is that the governor of each state has to opt in.

Democrat governors like Polis and the governor of New York have opted in, but so far Bob Ferguson is not.

I encourage you to call Bob and get him to opt in that program because every family could use that $1,700.

Ms.

- Conroy, 30 seconds.

- Yeah.

The tips on taxes and overtime, those are not eliminating taxes.

Those are temporary deductions that are going to expire in two years.

The application for the thousand dollar child grant by filling out form 4547, you've got to apply for it specifically.

That's not automatically granted.

And those voucher credits will absolutely undercut funding for especially rural public school districts, but public school education for all children.

And we cannot afford that in our largely working class district.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 - Seconds.

Yeah, just another issue I'd touch on.

Everybody that lives on the Idaho border like we does sees how much cheaper gas is in Idaho.

In part, that's because of a very foolish law passed called the Climate Commitment Act out of Olympia.

One of the things that Olympia could do right now is to rescind that act and that would help our gas prices here considerably.

But in general for Congress, I'm very proud of what we've done for those tax cuts and then also for the investments we've made.

And again, for our farmers, very pleased the support we gave and proud to be supported by the Farm Bureau and farmers all across Eastern Washington.

- Ms.

Conway, forgive me if I missed something, but I mostly heard answers that talked about rolling back something from the Trump era.

Is there something new that you would do to improve affordability for Americans other than to undo something?

- The main thing I would do is pass a federal minimum wage that is actually a living minimum wage.

We know that we pay, we as taxpayers pay about $2 billion a year towards supporting full-time workers at Amazon and Walmart, the two largest private sector employers in the country, because they don't pay people enough for them to live and they play states against each other.

So a worker in Idaho makes about $10 an hour less than a worker in Washington state.

- Ms.

Conroy, I apologize.

The timer should be 30 seconds.

Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 seconds.

- Yeah, just one other really cool thing we did.

There was a really foolish requirement that every manufactured home had to have a physical chassis under it.

That's why a lot of manufactured homes have to be like up and that increases the cost about $15,000 on an average home.

It's not needed.

So we remove that chassis requirement.

So that's going to allow more manufactured housing to bring costs down.

Also, we passed, we extended permanently low income tax credit, which will create about a million new low-income housing units across the country is another thing to help affordability.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, should Congress restrict access to gender transitioning medical interventions, otherwise known as gender-affirming care for minors?

- I think we certainly should.

I don't think anybody should have having that being done to their body under the age 18 as they get into adulthood and they want to make those decisions.

But the teenage years can be so confusing for folks as they're going through puberty and these things.

And some of the stories we've heard out from folks or survivors that have gone through this process and they've had important body parts physically removed by doctors.

It's extremely, extremely concerning.

So no, I do not think any child should go through physical gender transitioning with the drugs or God forbid, getting something cut off at that young age.

- Ms.

Conroy, a minute.

- Could you repeat the question please?

- Should Congress restrict access to gender transitioning medical interventions, otherwise known as gender-affirming care for minors?

- Yeah.

It should stop Pete Hegseth from adjusting minors in the military with testosterone.

I think that's a bad idea.

I generally believe that it is none of Congress's business to get between doctors and patients.

And I do remember that the last time around, Mr.

Baumgartner promised to let Washington state law stand with respect to reproductive rights, with respect to... We didn't talk about gender care, but since that's the question, that should be up to local decision makers, but really it ought to be up to patients and their doctors.

And with respect to minors, I do think that parents should have a say in that, and typically they are.

And it would be only by a court order that parents were harming their children that would prevent that from happening.

So word just came out that ectopic pregnancy deaths have doubled over the last four years.

It's tragic.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 seconds.

- Yeah.

If you meet with some of the survivors that have gone through these processes where they feel like in their teenage years that they were duped or coerced or just made a bad decision, it's impacted them for the rest of their lives.

So yeah, response to the question, I fully support Congress taking steps.

I voted that way to make sure that no child goes through a coerced sexual transition.

So if they want to do that in their adulthood, that's up to them, but for kids should be left alone.

- Conroy, 30 seconds.

- Well, I mean, you heard him.

He doesn't want parents and their kids and their doctors to make decisions.

I'm not a doctor.

I don't play one on TV.

Neither does he.

Those decisions should be left to the people closest to that child, closest to that family, and to the medical experts who know how to deal with gender-affirming care.

And I'm guessing that many of us in this room are using some sort of gender-affirming care with hormone therapy or whatever else we need to feel fully ourselves.

- Ms.

Conroy, our next question is about data centers.

Both the city of Spokane and Spokane County have approved moratoriums on the development of data centers amid community concerns about their impacts on the environment, people's pocketbooks, and public health.

Do you think this caution is merited and should Congress get involved?

I - Do think that the caution is merited.

A stretch of the Spokane River where I used to intertube when I was a kid was dry this summer, over a mile of the Spokane River out in the valley.

It's terrifying, and I'm grateful that Avista let us all know that there was a potential user that was going to use more electricity and more water than everybody who already lives here.

And shame on Commissioner Al French, who apparently knew that as well and hid that from us.

So I do think that the government, the city, counties, local state governments closest to the issues should be free to make the decisions that they need to protect the wellbeing of their citizens, and Congress should not get involved in that.

And if I remember correctly, Mr.

Baumgartner proposed a bill that would've prevented local governments from making those decisions themselves and would've forced us to wait for Congress to act.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, admit it.

- So the legislation I've proposed would make sure that no community has a data center forced into it that doesn't want it.

These need to be community-led discussions and no one should have their electricity rates or water rates increased to subsidize a data center.

And that's where the industry needs to get to go.

I think a lot of people have a lot of well-founded concerns about the future of artificial intelligence, what it means for our workforce, what it means for our ethics, and what it means for our security.

None of us want to be living under robot warlords.

Also, we have to recognize that we are in a race with China where they're rapidly developing supercomputer technology, and there are some benefits from this technology.

Last week, I was reading about earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer through the ability to use supercomputing to bring data together and look at these things.

So these need to be community-led conversations, but right now, I think voters and taxpayers have a lot of well-founded concern, and it is appropriate for people to take a bit of a pause to make sure that they understand these issues, and the industry needs to step forward and explain how it's going to happen.

- Ms.

Conroy, 30 seconds.

- Yep.

I think that there are good uses for AI and medical diagnostics is definitely one of them.

But I also know that I open up my computer and I no longer get a choice of whether my information goes to a cloud or stays right on my computer.

I open up my phone and I don't have a choice that I can figure out myself for whether AI gets between me and the email that I want to send or not.

So the tech bros who stood behind the president his inauguration are running things their way.

We need to be able to take a stand against them.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, 30 seconds.

- Just that this issue of AI and particularly the ethics and morals behind it is just going to be extremely important, not just for members of Congress, but for our society.

I am very concerned right now that political campaigns are using AI to run essentially campaigns, putting words in people's mouth or doing a recreation of that.

I think that should be banned and outlawed.

And so there's a lot of benefits, but also a lot of concerns.

And ultimately, Americans are moral and ethical and fair people, and we need to understand and make sure these technologies are used in that way as well.

- Mr.

Baumgartner, that's time.

I do want to ask as a follow-up, you recently shared a political cartoon that was made by AI about one of your primary opponents, Nate Powell.

How does that match your statements here?

- Well, yes.

I used a static cartoon that was very similar to how you would use a cartoon in a Sunday newspaper.

The videos I'm talking about is if you were to make a video of an opponent and have them saying things.

There's some videos about James Talrico in Texas up on the air right now, which I don't think should be running where they're taking things he said, but recreating him in a voice.

So yeah, look, a static cartoon that's black and white made in satire, I don't have a problem with that, but actually making it look like someone is doing something.

- And I apologize, this again should have been a 30-second clock.

Ms.

Conroy, do you have a follow-up?

- Yeah.

It's hurtful to have people using AI to make it uglier, look worse, say things that you would never say, and that should not be permitted.

I don't think that should be permitted in political or any other kind of advertising.

People ought to be able to trust what they see, and there's less and less confidence in that now.

- Unfortunately, it looks like we are running out of time, so we're going to turn to closing statements.

If I remember correctly, Ms.

Conroy, you won the coin toss, so you're going to go second.

So that means Mr.

Baumgartner, you have 60 seconds.

- Look, I love getting to be your member of Congress.

It's a lot of work, but I love Eastern Washington.

I was born in Pullman, raised in Colton, had the privilege of going to school here in Spokane and went to WSU, called to do something bigger, spent a year doing volunteer work with the Jesuits in Mozambique, and then went to Harvard for my master's and spent a lot of time in the Middle East, but this is home.

Eleanor and I met in Afghanistan roughly 17 years ago, and never knew I'd met the love of my life there, but we now have five beautiful children and we love Eastern Washington.

As you do this job, I would just ask everybody to think that we're all Americans at the end of the day, and the only thing that I can stop this wonderful country of ours is if we get so politically divided.

So Camilla Conroy, we have differences.

Some of you have difference with me, but we're not enemies.

We're not enemies.

We're all Americans at the end of the day, and it is a privilege to get to be a member of Congress.

And I ask for your vote, and hopefully I'll be lucky enough to get to continue to do it for another two years.

- Ms.

Conroy.

- I agree that we're not enemies, but I also believe that we've got very different ideas about what we would do in Congress.

And we've had two years to watch you raise our prices, cost our farmers their markets, put our 11 rural critical access hospitals at risk by cuts to Medicaid, tying people up with in red tape so that students can't get access to loans, and that is not what we need.

I'm a third generation Eastern Washingtonian.

My grandparents met at a Plus Wheat Harvest.

My grandpa worked on the Grand Coulee Dam.

My parents raised us kids here in Spokane and in the Spokane Valley.

Dad worked for the railroad, and I was the first person in my family to go to college.

I put myself through school, and then I came back and I was a deputy prosecutor here in Spokane County.

In the last of my four years there at that office, I prosecuted people who sexually abused children.

So I've got a real tough spot in my heart for people who defend - Ms.

Conroy.

People who would violate children.

- I apologize, that's your - Time.

And I hope to have your vote.

- Ms.

Conroy, Mr.

Baumgartner, I thank you for taking the time tonight.

Thank you all for coming out.

- I hope this helped you fill out your election ballot.

A reminder that ballot drop boxes are open across Spokane County.

You can find a list of locations at votewa.gov.

The drop boxes will close promptly at 8:00 PM on election day, which is Tuesday, November 3rd.

You can also mail your ballot, but you'll want to do that soon.

USPS recommends that you do so at least a week before election day.

To watch extended interviews and debates featured today, visit ksps.org or our YouTube channel.

From all of us here at KSPS PBS, thank you for watching.