The Gimme Lobby has taken its hand out of the taxpayers' pocket long enough to
point to the sky and shriek that it's falling! Like a slick magician doing
sleight-of-hand, they hope to distract voters' attention long enough to pull off their
trick undetected.
We are not going to allow that deception to happen.
AFL-CIO union boss and tax rollback opponent Robert Haynes has falsely charged:
"The working men and women of Massachusetts will go to great lengths to
spread the message about this irresponsible proposal cleverly disguised as a "tax
cutting" measure.
Keeping a promise made eleven years ago that the state income tax increase would
be only "temporary" -- a promise made during the Dukakis administration's fiscal
crisis, long before recent years of record state revenue surpluses -- cannot be
legitimately construed as an "irresponsible proposal." It is a genuine test of
integrity, a trait generally lacking among the selfish Gimme Lobby and absent in union
bosses.
By any stretch, our ballot question certainly is not "cleverly
disguised" nor is it a tax "cutting" measure. It proposes to merely keep an
eleven-year old promise, to roll back -- not cut -- the income tax rate.
We propose to keep the politicians' promise they have since refused to honor:
To roll the rate back to its historic level before billions of dollars from
over-taxation provided record state revenue "surpluses" and spending increases.
It will halt the politicians's unconscionable and irresistable over-spending that
has doubled the state budget in just the last dozen years, from $10 Billion to
its current $21 Billion. (It took 207 years for the commonwealth to reach its first $10
Billion budget, but only another dozen to double it ... and it's still growing!)
It will end the billions of taxpayer dollars from piling up higher in the state's savings accounts and "rainy day"
slush funds and allow the rightful owners of these huge tax over-payments -- the
income earners -- to save it for themselves and their families.
Fear, lies and unmitigated greed are the only weapons available to the Gimme
Lobby. Integrity, honor, generousity, truth and justice are on the side of the beleaguered
taxpayers.
Taxpayers seek only what was promised them and ever since denied.
Taxpayers seek to restore the tax rate to its level before they generously allowed
themselves to be further taxed "temporarily" -- allegedly just long enough to
bail Beacon Hill out of its fiscal mismanagement.
We do not seek a tax cut.
We seek the promised tax rollback of eleven years ago when the increase was sold
to us as "only temporary."
And so the campaign of fear, lies and greed has been launched.
It is all the desperate Gimme Lobby has available.
Fear, lies ... and unmitigated greed.