Will make our lives WORSE

Michael Baumgartner

1 year as Representative - District 5 in Washington

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Will make our lives WORSE

Made Everything More Expensive

Food, rent, electricity, healthcare - in America we should be able to afford these basic necessities of life without going bankrupt.

Michael Baumgartner has supported the current administration's tariffs and other policies which have led to:
  • Half of all Americans struggling to afford groceries
  • 47% struggling to afford their utility bills
  • 47% struggling to afford healthcare
  • 48% struggling to afford housing
  • 1 in 4 Americans saying they have skipped a medical checkup due to affordability
  • 23% skipping a prescription dose
  • Gas prices skyrocketing

Food prices chart


We are feeling this directly in our wallets. What is Michael Baumgartner doing about that? Making things worse. We deserve better.

Will make our lives WORSE

Made Healthcare Unaffordable and Harder to Get

We all deserve access to quality healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives.

Michael Baumgartner disagrees:
  • He voted to cut more than $1 trillion in federal health care and food assistance as part of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act"
  • He voted to let ACA tax credits expire, increasing health costs for millions of Americans, driving many of them to switch to cheaper plans or abandon health insurance coverage altogether. And the less people there are with coverage, the higher the rest of our premiums will be.
  • He wants to repeal the ACA, reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, and add work requirements to Medicaid.

We need healthcare to live. Literally. What is Michael Baumgartner doing to help us? Making things worse. We deserve better.

Will make our lives WORSE

Wants to Gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security aren't handouts. They're earned benefits that we pay into out of every single paycheck, our entire working lives, so that we can see a doctor, take care of our parents, and retire with dignity instead of going bankrupt when we get old or sick.

For years, Michael Baumgartner and his party have been quietly laying the groundwork to gut these programs. Now they've said the quiet part out loud.
  • They admitted the plan. Speaker Mike Johnson told the "Moon Griffon Show" that "entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and things like Social Security ... have to be adjusted and fixed," and that "We have a plan to do that next year ... desperate times call for desperate measures."
  • We know what the plan looks like. The Republican Study Committee — a caucus of more than 170 House Republicans that includes Speaker Johnson and his top three deputies in leadership — released a budget calling for raising the Social Security retirement age for future retirees and converting Medicare into a privatized "premium support" model that would hand seniors over to for-profit insurance companies.
  • They already started. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Michael Baumgartner supported cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid to help pay for tax cuts for the richest 1 percent.
  • Even Republicans admit what "reform" means. Sen. Josh Hawley, on the push to "address" and "reform" these programs: "That's usually code for 'cut.' I'm not in favor of that."
  • It's a broken promise. Donald Trump pledged in 2024, "I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare." Michael Baumgartner and his party are now preparing to do exactly that.

These programs are a promise: work hard, pay in your whole life, and your country will be there for you when you need it. Michael Baumgartner wants to break that promise so he can keep cutting taxes for billionaires. We deserve better.

Will make our lives WORSE

Cut Taxes for the Rich, While Making the Rest of Us Pay For It

We all need to pay our fair share to the government so it can provide the services that benefit all of us.

But billionaires in the U.S. pay a smaller tax rate than most teachers and nurses. That's not fair.
  • The wealthiest 400 billionaire families in the U.S. paid an average federal individual tax rate of just 8.2 percent. For comparison, the average American taxpayer in the same year paid 13 percent.
  • The 25 richest Americans paid $13.6 billion in taxes from 2014-2018 — a "true" tax rate of just 3.4 percent on $401 billion of income.
  • 23 of the largest and most profitable companies in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes from 2018-2022. And 109 corporations paid zero federal tax in at least one of those years.
  • The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that Michael Baumgartner supported will reduce taxes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, while raising taxes for the poorest Americans.

Michael Baumgartner is on the side of the billionaires and big business. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Sacrificed the Environment For Big Business

We all deserve clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet to live on.

Michael Baumgartner has supported the repealing and rolling back of environmental protections and climate change regulations, all so that billionaires and big business can plunder natural resources and destroy our environment in the name of profit.

He has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters in 2025 — voting against the environment every single time, 33 out of 33 votes.

EPA Pollution EPA Climate Change We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Wants Us Poor and Hungry

I think we can all agree that nobody in America, the richest country in the world, should go hungry.

Michael Baumgartner disagrees.
  • He supported the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that dramatically cuts funding for SNAP, and the people that need food assistance most.
  • About 39% of SNAP participants are children, and 20% are elderly
  • 42.1 million Americans receive SNAP benefits every month

SNAP stats
Michael Baumgartner doesn't care if we go hungry. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Is Intentionally Wrecking Our Public Schools and Our Kids' Futures

Nine out of ten American children49.6 million of them — go to a public school. It's where they learn to read, where they eat breakfast and lunch, where kids with disabilities are guaranteed an education by law, and where a kid from any family, rich or poor, religious or not, gets a fair shot.

Michael Baumgartner and his party are taking that apart on purpose: draining public school money into private and religious schools, pushing one religion into everybody else's classrooms, and shutting down the federal department that is supposed to look out for our kids.
  • He voted to create the first national private school voucher in American history. It is hidden inside the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." You give up to $1,700 a year to a charity that hands out private school scholarships, and the government gives you back every penny you gave on your taxes. It costs you nothing — no other tax break in the country works that way. Each person is capped at $1,700, but any number of people can do it, so there is no limit on what it drains from the Treasury. It starts January 1, 2027. Congress's own scorekeepers say $26 billion over ten years; one tax research group says as much as $51 billion every year — more than the government spends on Title I ($18.4 billion) for poor schools and IDEA ($14.6 billion) for kids with disabilities combined. And "low-income" means a family earning three times what a normal family in their area earns still qualifies — in some places, $500,000 a year.
  • They are giving away our tax dollars to families who are already wealthy and were never in public school to begin with. Every state that has tried it gets the same result — the money goes to people already paying private tuition: 95% of Arkansas voucher users never attended a public school. In Florida's first year of universal vouchers, 69% of new recipients were already in private school and only 13% had ever set foot in a public one. In Iowa, two-thirds were already in private school. We aren't rescuing kids from bad schools — we're cutting checks to families who never needed them, with the money coming out of the schools 90% of our kids actually attend. Chart: 95% of Arkansas voucher recipients, and 87% in Iowa and among Florida's new recipients, had never attended a public school
  • And the kids who do switch end up doing worse. Four careful studies found the same thing. In Washington, DC, voucher kids fell behind in math. In Louisiana, a student who started in the middle of the class dropped to the bottom third in math after three years. Indiana and Ohio found the same. Kids with disabilities lost the most.
  • The money goes to religious schools that can turn our kids away. Ohio now spends nearly $1 billion a year on vouchers, the vast majority going to Catholic and evangelical schools — schools that, unlike public schools, can reject your child over their religion, their disability, or who their parents are, or for ANY REASON AT ALL with almost no accountability for the public money they take. Many have simply raised tuition to capture the vouchers instead of enrolling more students.
  • He stood by while the Department of Education was gutted. That department is the one that gets the federal money out to our schools and college students, enforces the laws that stop a school from discriminating against your child, and keeps track of how America's schools are actually doing. Roughly half the department's workforce is gone — 1,400 laid off, 600 pushed into early retirement, about 100 probationary employees fired — and around $30 billion in education programs has been shipped off to the other departments, none of which run schools.
  • He made college more expensive too. The same "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" ends the federal loan program graduate students use to cover what scholarships don't, caps how much parents can borrow for their kids' college, and scraps the repayment plans tied to what borrowers actually earn. Under the replacement, a family of four earning $81,000 sees their monthly payment go from $36 to $440 and repayment stretches to 30 years.

Our public schools took generations to build, and they are the one institution that has to take every single child who walks in the door. Michael Baumgartner is helping tear them down and hand the pieces to private interests. Our kids will pay for it for the rest of their lives. We deserve better.

Will make our lives WORSE

Destroyed Our Jobs

A good job where we can make a living to support our families, own a home, and have a good life. That's the American Dream.

Michael Baumgartner supports policies and an administration that are turning the American Dream into a nightmare.
  • There were 20.8 million layoffs in the U.S. in 2025
  • 55% of employed Americans say they're concerned about losing their jobs
  • The unemployment rate is 4.2%
  • In 2025 the U.S. economy averaged just 15,000 jobs added per month, a dramatic decrease from the monthly average of 125,000 the year before Trump took office.
  • Overall employment for workers without college degrees fell by 361,000 jobs from January to September 2025.
  • 58,000 net manufacturing jobs have been lost from April, when the administration announced "Liberation Day" tariffs, to September 2025.

Job losses
We can't live the American Dream without well-paying jobs. Michael Baumgartner doesn't care. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Works for Billionaires and Big Business and Not for Us

Our elected officials should work for us, the people.

Michael Baumgartner works for billionaires and big business, not for us. Look at who some of his top funders are:

Michael Baumgartner is funded by billionaires, big business and special interests. No wonder he's not doing anything to improve OUR lives. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Does Whatever Donald Trump Tells Him to Do

As a member of Congress, part of Michael Baumgartner's job is to act as a check and balance to the executive branch. He and his fellow members of Congress from Washington have completely abdicated their responsibility. These spineless cowards are rubber stamping everything Donald Trump wants to do, no matter how crazy, dangerous or harmful. And we've seen the results. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Protected Pedophiles by Blocking Release of the Epstein Files

Jeffrey Epstein ran a global sex trafficking network that sexually abused dozens of girls and women for decades. The FBI identified at least 35 minors with similar abuse histories. When finally released in 2026, the files — over 3 million pages, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images — revealed what UN human rights experts called "disturbing and credible evidence" of a possible global criminal enterprise. Those experts said some of the conduct may meet the threshold for crimes against humanity, including sexual slavery, torture, and enforced disappearance.

For months, House Republican leadership blocked every vote to release these files — and Michael Baumgartner went along.
Will make our lives WORSE

Values Guns More Than Our Kids' Lives

We deserve to feel safe in our neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship.

In order to do that, we need to take real steps to prevent gun violence. And despite what we've been told, it is possible to support the 2nd Amendment and support common-sense gun safety laws at the same time. But Michael Baumgartner has opposed bipartisan gun safety laws, while offering meaningless thoughts and prayers every time there's a new mass shooting.
  • A child or adolescent is killed with a gun every 2 hours and 48 minutes in the U.S.
  • Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the U.S. are 33 times greater than in Australia and 77 times greater than in Germany
  • Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and wounded
  • Women in the U.S. are 28 times more likely to be killed with a gun than women in other high-income countries.

Gun violence
Michael Baumgartner is OK with our kids dying, as long as he has his guns. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Wants the Government to Control Women's Bodies

America is the land of FREEDOM. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to start a business, freedom to choose your own career path, freedom to make your own medical decisions, freedom to raise your children according to your values, and freedom to pursue happiness. Freedom is what makes America great.

Unless you're a woman and you're making the deeply personal decision about whether to have a baby or not. A decision that will dramatically affect the rest of your life. In that case Michael Baumgartner thinks that your freedom doesn't matter and that the government should get to control your body. That's not freedom, that's tyranny.

Michael Baumgartner:
  • Opposed Roe v. Wade
  • Attacked Planned Parenthood throughout his career

Arkansas House of Representatives candidate (and pastor) Robb Ryerse stated it well: "Abortion should remain safe and legal. These are personal decisions best made by patients, their doctors, and their faith — not politicians. You don't have to agree with every decision someone makes to believe they should be free to make it. That's what personal liberty means." Almost 2/3 of Americans agree and believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But Michael Baumgartner thinks he knows better, and doesn't believe that we should have the freedom to make our own decisions. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Is Trying to Take Away Our Voting Power

In America our vote represents our will. It gives us the power to make the change that we want to see in the world.

Unfortunately that's not a sentiment that Michael Baumgartner's billionaire and big business donors can stomach. Because when we have voting power, we use it to make our lives better, and they lose power. Read about all the ways they're trying to take away our voting power on our about page, then come back here.

Michael Baumgartner has opposed legislation to make voting easier while supporting the SAVE Act, which would force every single American citizen to prove their citizenship status in person when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. For the vast majority of Americans, this would mean presenting a passport or birth certificate at their local election office. This would disenfranchise millions of U.S. citizens: 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and 69 million women who have married do not have a birth certificate that matches their new legal name. Working-class and low-income Americans would also be disproportionately disenfranchised if the bill became law, as the vast majority of these groups do not possess a passport.

SAVE Act
YOU HAVE POWER. Why else do you think Michael Baumgartner and his bosses are working so hard to take it away? Don't let them. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Supported America's Secret Police Force, ICE

Whether white, black, or brown, we should all be able to live in America and exercise our constitutional rights without fear that law enforcement will turn on us.

But the current administration has created a secret police force that is abusing their power against anyone who stands in their way, U.S. citizen or not. They claim to be going after "the worst of the worst", but are taking daycare workers, day laborers, grandmas and kids who are valued members of our communities. And Michael Baumgartner, staunch defender of the Second Amendment to fight back against government tyranny, is doing nothing while the government tyrannizes us.


And Michael Baumgartner is actively supporting and expanding ICE's power to terrorize our communities.
  • ProPublica: They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world's most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force.
  • ProPublica: Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they're showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can't access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there's a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.
  • New York Times: Masked and heavily armed, ICE agents are sent to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis to terrorize immigrant communities and brutalize people who challenge their efforts to stop and detain anyone deemed suspicious. To expand its reach, ICE greatly lowered its recruitment standards, effectively enlisting anyone who cares to sign up. To attract new officers, ICE advertises the chance to do violence to people deemed "enemies" of the United States, likening civil immigration enforcement to a war on a dangerous, alien force. The result is an agency whose agents' first recourse appears to be violence or the threat of violence.
  • They are executing American citizens. On January 7, 2026 an ICE agent in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a mother of 3, by shooting her in the face as she tried to drive away. Then the killer walked away, and our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened. Decent politicians condemned the murder. What did Michael Baumgartner have to say? Nothing.
  • They are executing American citizens: Part 2. On January 24, 2026 ICE agents in Minneapolis murdered an American citizen, a 37 year old ICU nurse, who was filming their activity and trying to help others. Then our government lied and tried to gaslight us about what happened.
  • And the list of the dead keeps growing. ICE agents — on duty and off — keep killing members of our communities, while Michael Baumgartner says nothing:
    • On December 31, 2025, an off-duty ICE officer in Northridge, Los Angeles shot and killed Keith Porter Jr., a 43-year-old U.S. citizen and father of two who was born and raised in Compton. Federal officials called it self-defense against an "active shooter," but Porter's family says he was peacefully returning home and never posed a threat — and witnesses reported only three shots, matching his autopsy and contradicting claims of an exchange of gunfire.
    • On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three and small-business owner who had lived in the U.S. for 35 years. Agents had been hunting a different white van. Harris County's medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and his co-workers disputed ICE's claim that he used his vehicle as a weapon.
    • On July 13, 2026, an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian father who was legally authorized to work in the U.S. and supported his wife and 3-year-old daughter by delivering food and cleaning a veterinary clinic. He was not the target of ICE's warrant — agents were looking for someone else — and were not wearing body cameras. Even Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins urged DHS to halt non-urgent vehicle stops in the state.

If ICE can murder innocent U.S. citizens without repercussions, what could they do to you? ICE is out of control and a danger to us all - no one is safe. What's Michael Baumgartner going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. We deserve better.
Will make our lives WORSE

Voted for the Unnecessary and Unpopular War in Iran

War destroys human lives, families and innocent people, causes economic ruin, and triggers immense suffering. War should always be the option of last resort.

In order to distract from the Epstein Files, Donald Trump started an illegal war of choice with Iran, and now:

The American people don't want this war with Iran. But Michael Baumgartner supports this madness and voted against the War Powers Resolution that would have stopped it. Does Michael Baumgartner work for Israel or the people of Washington? We deserve better.
Michael Baumgartner AIPAC
Will make our lives WORSE

Angered His Constituents

To be fair, Michael Baumgartner does hold in-person town halls — something many of his colleagues refuse to do.

At a March 2025 town hall in Spokane, hundreds of constituents showed up angry, booing and interrupting to demand answers on Social Security cuts, Medicaid, ICE raids, and Trump's threats to annex Canada. Baumgartner's response to the healthcare question? "We will have to agree to disagree." On annexing Greenland: "If we could get Greenland peacefully, I'm all for it."

After facing the crowd, he told reporters it "may be the last in-person town hall in the near future" and suggested switching to telephone town halls to cut down on what he called disruptive behavior.

When campaign season hit in 2026, he was back to in-person meetings — this time as part of a "12 counties in 12 days" re-election tour.

He'll show up when he needs your vote. The rest of the time, he'd rather not hear from you. We deserve better.
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Washington

...it's time to vote MAGA out!
  • Violent Crime: #27
  • Murder: #22/49
  • Firearm Death: #15
  • Incarceration: #11
  • Overall Health: #7
  • Life Expectancy: #12
  • Food Insecurity: #7
  • Obesity: #12/48
  • Women's Health: #14
  • Child Well-being: #17
  • Teen Birth Rate: #13
  • Maternal Mortality: #8/39
  • Infant Mortality: #17
  • Household Income: #7
  • Poverty Rate: #11
  • Public Education: #5
  • Voter Turnout: #13
Overall Rank: #9
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