For Immediate Release
January 5 of the 16th year of the "temporary" income tax
hike
Contact: Barbara Anderson - 508-384-0100
Inspired by University of Massachusetts polls that
always seem to find voters ambivalent about or even supportive of new
state taxes, CLT did its own nonpartisan poll (of CLT members), and
found a clear majority opinion: 99.6% of respondents do not support
higher state taxes.
Since we’ve always wondered just how the questions
were asked to get such pro-tax responses, we will give you our
question up front:
"Given that the state budget can barely
increase this year over last, do you think that the Legislature should
raise taxes?"
The latest UMass survey polled 401 Massachusetts
voters and found that 54 percent opposed any new state or property
taxes; it had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent. CLT had
838 respondents to our poll, which had a margin of error of plus or
minus of zero percent. The results seem clear to us.
CLT’s New Year’s Resolution
To keep reminding the media that whenever it’s
inclined to refer to a FY2005 "budget deficit" or
"budget hole" or "shortfall" of $1.5 billion, $2
billion or whatever, it should make it clear to readers/listeners that
this is NOT a cut in the present budget, but instead is an
amount by which spending advocates want to INCREASE the budget,
and can’t.
The FY2005 budget will of course increase, just as
the FY2004 budget increased; the "deficit" just means
someone wants to spend even more but needs a tax hike or more
"fee" increases to do so.
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