In 1992, Democrats across the country won power and then presided over a paralyzed political process. President Clinton’s failure to move health care reform created great disappointment among the voters. And while the economy had turned up, workers’ wages were still stagnating.

Voters responded by throwing Democrats out of office. It happened here, too. The Democrats’ majority in the House was demolished. They started out with a 65-33 edge over the Republicans. After the November 1994 election, they had 37 seats left.

This year, the Democrats – having won the governorship, the state Senate and the state House of Representatives – are asking themselves how they can make sure they don’t repeat this sorry history.

One group of Democrats is eager to limit policy progress, to effectively maintain the status quo and go no further. Another group of Democrats wants to put into place policies that shore up the foundation in our state for economic security, educational opportunity and environmental protection. These policies add up to the greater good and nudge the status quo with a little more support for middle-class workers and families and a little less favoritism to the already privileged.

On the side of nudging the status quo a little bit (also known as common sense), the House has passed clean-emission legislation, something that enables us to piggyback on the fifth-largest economy in the world – California – which leads the way on strict car emissions. Both the Senate and the House have passed legislation to mandate that 15 percent of major public construction jobs go to apprentices, something that ensures our construction work force for the future and opens up the trades for minorities and women. The House also passed policy to create a child care workers’ wage ladder, with wage hikes linked to higher relevant education. They understand the equation: Decent wages = higher quality child care = children’s readiness to learn.

Democrats in the Senate have done perhaps the heaviest lifting, challenging the business lobbyists who prefer ideology to pragmatic advances, by moving forward family leave legislation, which enables a new mom to get partial wage compensation ($250 a week for five weeks) to care for her child before she goes back to work, as well as allowing the same sort of compensation for a worker to care for a parent who has had heart surgery or is dying of cancer.

This program, paid with a two-penny-an-hour premium, marries the American values of dignity of work and sanctity of family. It will be a vote-getter, not a vote-loser, in the 2006 elections.

The status quo has been reinforced by the failure of Democrats to pass a bill to stop the current practice of the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) of creaming off 20 percent of workers compensation refunds for safe workplaces to fund political campaigns against Democrats.

Those refunds should go back to the employers and workers who paid the premiums in the first place. That would be an employer-friendly incentive. Instead, they are helping fund campaigns such as the identity theft operation that BIAW used to capture signatures in its ongoing bid to help the Republican Party overturn the governor’s election.

Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the BIAW, cautions Democrats not to overreach. But what he is really saying is, “Let me keep my slush fund so I can fund campaigns against you.”

And that is the lesson from the 1994 elections. The voters hosed the Democrats then because they failed to deliver. So the solution for retaining the trust of the voters is not to do as little as possible, but to move our state forward, to wield power for the greatest good.

Legislators need to step up to the problems that we all face. Given the current reality of employers shifting health care costs and shrinking coverage, we need policy solutions to expand health coverage. Given that stagnating wages force us to work more, with less time for our families, we need policies that enable us to care for our new children and ill parents. Given the high bar of the WASL tests, we need to invest in public education so our kids can pass these tests and have the opportunity to learn and prosper.

That is not a Democratic agenda. That’s the agenda of the voters who elected Democrats into the majority in the Legislature. To keep their trust, now the Democrats have to deliver.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.