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Can nobody in politics do math? Is nobody running the numbers and injecting a dose of reality into our policies? A proposal in Olympia would see sales tax removed from diapers so that parents will be better able to afford them.

spoke with a mom who said that because of the sales tax on diapers, she lets her baby sit in her waste for too long. She also said that she has gone without a phone to pay for her baby’s diapers.

Eastside Baby Corner in Issaquah is trying to get the tax eliminated. They said that diapers can add up to $100 per month per child.

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Let me do some math for you. A baby goes through maybe five diapers a day. I just went on Amazon and found a 216-count of Huggies for $40. That’s about 43 days worth of diapers. How is Eastside Baby Corner selling to the public and to the Legislature that diapers can cost $100 per child per month? Maybe if they’re silken disposable diapers they’re that expensive, but not for regular old Huggies.

The diapers that I found cost less than 20 cents per diaper, which adds up to less than $1 per day per child. That works out to under $30 per month per child. The sales tax on $30 is $3. That’s $36 a year in sales tax that we’d be eliminating through this bill. If you can’t afford $36 per year, then you probably can’t afford kids. Wait until you have a little more money to start a family. Now, sometimes, people have kids and then unfortunate things happen. But $3 a month is not going to make a difference. They’re pitching numbers that are phony to the Legislature.

There are lots of great charities out there that provide diapers for people in need — including Eastside Baby Corner. And so I see this story about a mom who has to let her baby sit in its waste because she can’t afford diapers, and somehow a sales tax exemption will make that affordable — none of it makes sense. And I’m here to let you know that, because the Legislature is out there pitching, quite frankly, diaper filler, to look like they’re doing something noble.

Plus, don’t we still have reusable cloth diapers in this world?