Misleading statement suggests both parties wanted WA Cares when they didn't

When Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, opened a recent work session for the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, she said that the state’s law on long-term care was passed by the Legislature on a “bipartisan basis.” As Inigo Montoya said in “The Princess Bride,” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The law that created WA Cares, proposed in House Bill 1087, cannot be described as bipartisan legislation. By the time the bill made its way through the legislative process, it was passed on a party-line vote in the House of Representatives and had just one Rep...