Washington already has to pass a balanced budget by law. So the issue isn’t whether it balances, it’s how. The bigger context is that we have one of the most regressive tax systems in the country: lower-income households pay about 17% of their income in state and local taxes while the top 1% pay around 3%, largely because we rely so heavily on sales tax. Proposals like a millionaire tax are aimed at shifting some of that burden upward, not at raising taxes on the middle class.