Michael Baumgartner

Republican Congressman Michael Baumgartner, who represents Eastern Washington in the U.S. House of Representatives, and Democratic challenger Carmela Conroy met on the debate stage for the second time this summer at a Monday event in Walla Walla.

The forum was hosted by the Walla Walla chapter of the American Association of University Women in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting and held at Whitman College.

Moderator Matt Loveless, a scholarly assistant professor of communication at Washington State University, quizzed the candidates on many of the same issues they’ve faced since they first ran against each other in 2024: affordability, immigration, the national debt and election security.

By the end of the hour, both candidates had attacked each other’s policy positions, and each at least once had denied something they previously said or voted for.

Affordability and trade

With prices continuing to climb, both candidates were asked what Congress should do to improve affordability. Baumgartner again pointed to housing reform in the bipartisan 21st Century Road to HOUSING bill that became law this summer and tax cuts in the 2025 tax and spending package, the One Big Beautiful Bill.

He claimed Conroy would have supported “the largest tax increase in American history,” which appeared to be a reference to letting tax cuts from the first Trump term expire under a deadline approved at the time by Republicans. Conroy has previously said she supported extending the tax cuts for working families, but not those for businesses.

Conroy again pointed to the Trump administration’s sweeping policy of tariffs as a primary driver of higher prices, arguing that Baumgartner knew the import taxes would hurt producers in his district but had acquiesced at the behest of party leadership.

Baumgartner has repeatedly stated that he opposes tariffs on principle, though his stance appears to have softened somewhat since he came into office, a tension on display later in the debate.

“Tariffs are taxes – this is why I oppose them,” Baumgartner said Monday night, before going on to argue that tariffs were useful negotiating tools with countries that were not trading fairly with America.

“If Carmela Conroy had not lost the last election and was in Congress, she would have folks like the Washington potato growers come to her and say, ‘Right now British Columbia is not buying Washington potatoes,’” he continued. “Japan is using what’s called a non-tariff barrier, saying there’s some microbe on the potatoes, do not purchase them.”

Debt, healthcare

Baumgartner argued Monday that government “at all levels” was “not doing right by future generations” by spending more than it was taking in– though this is technically only legal at the federal level.

“I mean, America now has $40 trillion in debt,” he said. “This year, the federal government will spend $7 trillion on the back of $5 trillion in revenue.”

He said Republicans have made progress curtailing the federal government’s spending, in part through the Elon Musk-led DOGE reforms and by adding work requirements to Medicaid and food stamps. Baumgartner noted efforts to pressure states to kick undocumented immigrants off of Medicaid– though, while federal taxpayers do fund Emergency Medicaid payments for life-saving care provided to undocumented immigrants, Washington state taxpayers primarily foot the bill to provide healthcare to this population.

Meanwhile, Congress has added roughly $4 trillion to the national debt since Baumgartner came into office, in part because of the extended tax cuts the incumbent defended earlier in the debate.

“I certainly would not have voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill. … We would not have put an additional $4 trillion dollars on our children’s and our grandchildren’s credit cards just since that vote was taken,” Conroy said.

However, Conroy on Monday reiterate d her pledge to expand access to Medicaid for all U.S. residents under the age of 20. Mandatory spending on programs like Social Security and Medicaid remains the largest driver of the nation’s spending increases.

Conroy asserted this reform would both improve the health of America’s young people and also bolster rural hospitals whose budgets have been threatened by Medicaid cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill.

After repeated references to undocumented immigrants being kicked off Medicaid, the candidates were asked to address impacts on legal immigrants. Conroy expressed no knowledge of the issue; Baumgartner denied it was real.

“Well, there’s no cuts to legal immigrants,” Baumgartner said. “There’s no cuts to legal immigrants.”

According to a fact sheet produced by the Washington State Healthcare Authority in June, the incumbent is incorrect. Reforms under the One Big Beautiful Bill narrowed which immigrants qualified, meaning legal migrants who are asylum seekers, refugees, parolees – including Afghans and Ukrainians granted parole under the Biden administration – and others will lose coverage in October, according to the fact sheet.

Reporting by the Walla Walla Union Bulletin, which the moderator referenced Monday, suggests 11,000 lawfully present migrants in Washington would lose access to Medicaid.

Instead, Baumgartner pivoted to touting reforms that disincentivize states from paying for the healthcare of undocumented immigrants and measures like work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps.

“Those are two really important reforms as we seek to stretch those dollars further,” Baumgartner said, adding that state voters could choose to foot the bill if they wanted, but “…a federal government that is $40 trillion in debt and spending $7 trillion on the back of $5 trillion in revenue just can’t afford that.”

Conroy argued that the work requirements Baumgartner supports often amounted to additional bureaucracy and paperwork for those legitimately in need.

“All of those folks are now going to have to file paperwork twice a year to document that they are still disabled,” Conroy said, “which the moderator referenced Monday, suggests 11,000 lawfully present migrants in Washington would lose access to Medicaid.

Instead, Baumgartner pivoted to touting reforms that disincentivize states from paying for the healthcare of undocumented immigrants and measures like work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps.

“Those are two really important reforms as we seek to stretch those dollars further,” Baumgartner said, adding that state voters could choose to foot the bill if they wanted, but “…a federal government that is $40 trillion in debt and spending $7 trillion on the back of $5 trillion in revenue just can’t afford that.”

Conroy argued that the work requirements Baumgartner supports often amounted to additional bureaucracy and paperwork for those legitimately in need.

“All of those folks are now going to have to file paperwork twice a year to document that they are still disabled,” Conroy said. “That includes veterans who’ve become quadriplegics… those people shouldn’t have to prove to the U.S. government over and over again, for the rest of their lives, that those limbs haven’t grown back.”

Dismember or behead?

Asked to respond to the Trump administration’s deportation policies and the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Baumgartner expressed concern with some of ICE’s operations but argued that tightened border security had been successful.

“I think all of us were a little uncomfortable or more than uncomfortable with what happened in Minnesota and some of the theatrics that were going on by various aspects of the ICE detention, so I thought it was great when senior leadership was replaced,” he said. “But, you know, you look at how much fentanyl deaths are down … there’s been zero getaways at the border for the last 16 months.”

“And one thing I was very uncomfortable with, that my opponent said, was she talked about ICE being beheaded,” he added. “And she also called ICE detention facilities concentration camps, and that is really not appropriate.”

Conroy contended that “concentration camps” was an appropriate term for taking people “in a specific category, who’ve not been convicted of crimes, and you concentrate them in a single place and deprive them of their liberty and access to health care, to food, to their families. … You are creating a concentration camp.”

But she denied ever using the word “beheaded.”

“With respect to the term ‘beheaded,’ I’m gonna give Mr. Baumgartner the benefit of the doubt and guess that he’s been poorly advised by his staff,” Conroy said. “I did not say anything about beheading. I did say that (the Department of Homeland Security) needed to be dismembered.”

It’s true Conroy didn’t say she wanted to behead ICE ; she said she wanted to behead the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, and it’s not the first time Conroy has been questioned about that statement.

“We need to dismantle and behead DHS,” Conroy said at The Spokesman-Review’s July 5 candidate forum.

At a September 9 debate, Conroy was asked about this statement in the context of her changing support for immigration agencies in the past two years. She made no effort at the time to contest her prior words, arguing instead that the Trump administration, with the support of Republicans like Baumgartner, had supercharged and weaponized the Department of Homeland Security to “terrorize members of our communities.”

Voter ID

The candidates were also asked about the SAVE Act, the Trump administration’s proposal to require voters provide proof of citizenship in order to cast their ballots. Conroy called the move unconstitutional, noting that states largely have the sole authority to regulate how elections are conducted within their borders.

“And the way that the SAVE Act is written, it would in fact put really a sort of poll tax on women who’ve changed their names or anybody’s who’s changed their names … or on registered tribal members who may only have a sovereign ID card as proof of their identity – but that’s not proof of American citizenship, ironically,” Conroy argued.

Baumgartner said trust in American elections was eroding, and the SAVE Act could shore up that trust. He pointed to Bush v. Gore in 2000, Rossi v. Gregoire in 2004, concerns in 2016 about Russian influence in Trump’s first election, “or the terrible events of January 6 in 2020.”

“For all of those reasons, we need to restore trust in elections,” Baumgartner said. “No one is trying to keep women from voting. No one is trying to keep anybody that’s old from voting. It’s simply a measure to say, prove you’re an American citizen to vote.”