Wealth & Money Quote by Cathy McMorris

A tidy piece of pocketbook populism, this line turns the dry mechanics of tax policy into a fairness story with a clear villain: a federal system that treats Eastern Washington like a sucker. McMorris is doing two things at once. She’s localizing a national debate ("Eastern Washington families and businesses") to signal she’s fighting for a place that often feels talked down to by coastal capitals, and she’s converting a wonky deduction into a moral claim: equal treatment.

The phrase "every penny" is calibrated outrage. It frames sales taxes not as a neutral revenue tool but as an accumulated, almost petty injustice - nickels and dimes that add up to real pain. Sales tax, unlike income tax, hits harder the less you make, so the subtext is solidarity with working and middle-class constituents without explicitly invoking redistribution. That’s not accidental; it lets her channel class pressure while keeping the ideological posture anti-tax, not pro-welfare.

The kicker is the comparison: "especially when people in most states are deducting their state income taxes". This is the resentment engine. It implies a tilted playing field created by states with income taxes (often coded, in conservative rhetoric, as big-government states) getting a perk others don’t. The context is the long-running fight over the federal SALT deduction and the differing burdens in states like Washington that rely heavily on sales tax. She’s not just asking for relief; she’s staking a claim that the federal tax code is picking winners - and her voters aren’t among them.