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CLT UPDATE
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Property under attack from
"Residential Redistribution"
|
In Massachusetts, this economic
stratification that controls where people live and how
they conduct their lives is being exacerbated by two big
public policy measures we have put in place: Proposition
2½ and the Community Preservation Act. At a time when
income inequality is a topic of frequent and intense
debate, it is important that those of us who care about
the future of Massachusetts acknowledge the impact of
public policies enacted over the past 35 years that
result in an ever-increasing division between the haves
and the have-nots in the Commonwealth....
Proposition 2½ and the Community
Preservation Act help affluent communities thrive at the
expense of the less affluent. Less affluent communities
simply cannot compete with the affluent communities in
the state when it comes to obtaining new businesses,
good credit ratings, or grant opportunities, because
they just do not have the extra money to invest in
themselves that affluent communities do.
Proposition 2½ and the Community
Preservation Act are based on good intentions. No one
wants to argue against protection of the taxpayer,
preservation of historical sites, recreation facilities
for youth, or purchasing land for conservation. However,
these initiatives have unwittingly exacerbated class
segregation in the Commonwealth.
There is enough data in hand for the
Legislature to review the merits of Proposition 2½, the
CPA, and perhaps other programs. If we seek to address
income inequality in Massachusetts, it is best if we
start by examining the laws which have been on the
books, in some cases, for many decades that are
contributing to the problem....
In an era of
heightened concern about inequality, it’s time to take a
stand against the inequality caused by these two laws.
CommonWealth Magazine
Thursday,
December 17, 2015
The
downsides of Prop. 2½ and Community Preservation Act
Well-intentioned policies are exacerbating inequality in
Massachusetts
This is what you get when you put a
community organizer in the White House — he tries to
reorganize your community from Washington.
Apparently, President Obama thinks
your neighborhood may not be inclusive enough, so he has
instructed his Department of Housing and Urban
Development to issue a new rule called Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing, which is designed to force
communities to diversify.
According to the Obama
administration, in too many neighborhoods “housing
choices continue to be constrained through housing
discrimination, the operation of housing markets, [and]
investment choices by holders of capital.” (Yes, that is
a quote from an actual HUD document, not a bad
undergraduate thesis on Karl Marx.)
Under Obama’s proposed rule, the
federal government will collect massive amounts of data
on the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of
thousands of local communities, looking for signs of
“disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial
status, national origin, or disability in access to
community assets.” Then the government will target
communities with results it doesn’t like and use
billions of dollars in federal grant money to bribe or
blackmail them into changing their zoning and housing
policies.
The Washington Post
Wednesday, July
15, 2015
Obama wants to reengineer
your neighborhood
By Marc A. Thiessen
Senator Mike Lee has just introduced a bill to defund
President Obama’s federal takeover of local government via the
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation. Lee’s bill is
called the “Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act” (it’s too new to have
a number). In addition to defunding AFFH, Lee’s bill defunds Obama’s
creepy and controlling housing “Assessment Tool,” which could be used as
a basis for “disparate impact” suits against your locality. Lee’s bill
has a number of co-sponsors, most notably including presidential
candidate Marco Rubio. Other co-sponsors are Tom Cotton, Mike Enzi, Jeff
Sessions, and David Vitter....
The House campaign against AFFH is being led by
Congressman Paul Gosar, who has already carried an amendment to defund
AFFH, and who has a stand-alone bill to repeal AFFH as well.
National Review
Friday, July 31, 2015
Lee, Rubio, Cotton, and More Move to Block AFFH in Senate
By
Stanley Kurtz
So new Speaker Paul Ryan and the other
concessionaires are actually funding unlawful activities by the Obama
regime.
Also spared the budget ax is the Housing and Urban
Development Department's radical project to subvert local zoning laws in
the U.S. through a new regulation called Affirmatively Furthering Fair
Housing.
HUD is re-engineering America's neighborhoods to fit
the administration's racialist agenda of what it thinks 1,200
communities around the country should look like. Under the new rule,
counties and cities that fail to loosen zoning restrictions on
low-income housing risk losing million of dollars in federal funding.
Over stern objections from municipalities, the Ryan
budget provides the funding to finance implementation of this massive,
unconstitutional intrusion into state and local sovereignty....
These establishment types — first Speaker John
Boehner, now his successor Ryan — make it very hard for voters to do the
adult thing and resist the flame-throwing fringe represented by Donald
Trump and others.
What is the point of a Republican majority if they
continue to capitulate to Democrats on everything?
Investor's Business Daily
December 21, 2015
Editorial
GOP Fully Funds Obama's Illegal Assault On
School Discipline, Local Zoning
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Chip Ford's CLT
Commentary
Right after my computer's catastrophic crash in
early December, in the midst of rebuilding it a report on
Proposition 2½ in CommonWealth Magazine was
brought to my attention. With my main computer down, I used my old
boat laptop (in storage for the winter with the rest of the boating
gear) to access the article. While reading it I recalled a
number of other news reports I'd read over the summer, been
following, had saved for possible future reference. The dots
immediately began to connect in my head but I couldn't access my
saved research, see if my recollection was accurate, until my
workstation was up and working again. Sure enough, the dots
are connecting.
The latest assault on
Proposition 2½ by Lawrence DiCara and
Michael Nicholson fits right into the recent Obama transformational
vision, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,"
which is defined by Washington Post columnist Marc A.
Thiessen:
This is not
about blocking housing discrimination, which has been
illegal since 1968. It is unlawful for someone to deny
you a loan or prevent you from buying a home because of
your race, creed or color. Socioeconomic status is — and
ought to be — another matter. If you want to buy a nice
house in the suburbs, you have to be able to afford it.
Apparently, Obama thinks that’s unfair discrimination by
the “holders of capital.”
DiCara and Nicholson have asserted:
"The main
problem with Proposition 2½ arises from the reality that
affluent communities are far more likely to pass
override and exclusion votes to fund projects through
property tax increases ... People who are in
lower-income brackets often settle in low tax/low
service communities partly because they cannot afford to
pay the taxes in the more affluent communities. There
results an economic segregation far greater than prior
to Proposition 2½."
"People who are in
lower-income brackets . . . cannot afford to pay the taxes in the
more affluent communities"? That's so obvious that the
argument makes no sense. I would think any homebuyer's
primary consideration is whether they can afford the cost of more
expensive real estate in whatever the community
— at least it should be.
When it isn't, such encouraged naïveté inevitably delivers a housing
market meltdown leading to a Great Recession such as we're still
trying to climb out from under.
Property taxes
are based on property values. Proposition 2½
simply puts a cap on the rate at which property taxes can be
increased without permission by local voters. It has
nothing to do with housing affordability other than its limitation
on property tax increases —
thereby making the American Dream of homeownership more affordable,
for everyone.
The Washington Post's Thiessen further observed:
Under Obama’s
proposed rule, the federal government will collect
massive amounts of data on the racial, ethnic and
socioeconomic makeup of thousands of local communities,
looking for signs of "disparities by race, color,
religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or
disability in access to community assets." Then the
government will target communities with results it
doesn’t like and use billions of dollars in federal
grant money to bribe or blackmail them into changing
their zoning and housing policies.
The last I knew
[National Review: "Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing: Sleeper Presidential Campaign Issue"
and
Lee, Rubio, Cotton, and More Move to Block AFFH in Senate] —
the Congressional Republican majorities in both the House and
Senate appeared sure to kill it. To my astonishment when
reading the Investor's Business Daily editorial — it was fully
funded in the recent Omnibus federal spending bill sent to the
president, who got everything he wanted so of course signed it
with glee.
This brings us to the
proposed ballot question for a constitutional amendment, again, for
a graduated income tax. Income redistribution is on the
socialists' front burner. If you have more than someone else —
regardless of how you came by it — they're coming to take it from
you and give it to someone else.
But income redistribution
is no longer enough for them: Now the socialists are pursuing
residential redistribution as well. "Economic Segregation" is
their ginned-up phrase — you know, like "common sense" everything
they want, imposing their whims "for the children,"
providing gun "safety" instead of imposing gun control,
"undocumented workers" rather than illegal aliens, "climate change" not "global
warming" any longer, but never ever utter "radical
Islamic terrorism" or you're a racist — and of course their cavalier
charge of "racism" against opposition to everything they
advocate but find indefensible.
"Economic Segregation" has
now been launched.
I call it "Residential
Redistribution."
DiCara and Nicholson are
the first to publicly assault Proposition 2½
(and the Community Preservation Act) in an attempt to impose
residential redistribution: "In
an era of heightened concern about inequality, it’s time to take a
stand against the inequality caused by these two laws."
Not to mention that without Proposition 2½ many fewer could
afford to own a home — with the onerous property tax situation
before it was adopted!
We have challenges and trying times ahead, folks.
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Chip Ford |
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CommonWealth Magazine
Thursday, December 17, 2015
The downsides of Prop. 2½ and Community Preservation Act
Well-intentioned policies are exacerbating inequality in
Massachusetts
By Lawrence S. DiCara and Michael Nicholson
In his recent book, Our Kids, Harvard political scientist Robert
Putnam argues that the American dream of obtaining a good education,
joining the workforce, owning property, and being a prosperous
citizen has become increasingly skewed during the past half century.
A nation that was built upon the concepts of opportunity and social
mobility has been replaced by
a bifurcated nation. Likewise, a recent book by Bill Bishop
entitled The Big Sort confirms that, across America, people are
choosing to live in neighborhoods with people like themselves.
Sadly, this trend extends to where we worship and with whom we
socialize.
In Massachusetts, this economic stratification that controls where
people live and how they conduct their lives is being exacerbated by
two big public policy measures we have put in place: Proposition 2½
and the Community Preservation Act. At a time when income inequality
is a topic of frequent and intense debate, it is important that
those of us who care about the future of Massachusetts acknowledge
the impact of public policies enacted over the past 35 years that
result in an ever-increasing division between the haves and the
have-nots in the Commonwealth.
Proposition 2½ and the Community Preservation Act determine how
Massachusetts municipalities collect and spend the money they take
in from property taxes. Proposition 2½, approved by voters in 1980,
limits, with statutory exceptions, the amount of money a
municipality can collect from property taxes. The Community
Preservation Act, which must be adopted by a local approval of
voters in a community, creates a special municipal fund that
collects a surcharge on property taxes and then apportions the
amount raised for the purposes of purchasing open space, historic
preservation, recreational upgrades, or the building of affordable
housing units. Both laws may have had good intentions, but there are
unanticipated consequences resulting from each which should now
merit our attention.
The main problem with Proposition 2½ arises from the reality that
affluent communities are far more likely to pass override and
exclusion votes to fund projects through property tax increases. It
is simple math — the rich have more expendable income than do the
poor. The rich can afford the extra tax increases, while the poor
cannot. Affluent communities pass overrides regularly; in poor
communities, overrides fail frequently. Newton passed an override to
approve $11.5 million in spending in 2002. Duxbury passed an
override in 2008, that increased the average household tax bill by
$108 in order to design renovations for the town’s public pool.
North Attleboro, however, voted down an override to increase
spending by $4 million ($413 per household) in April of 2015,
causing large cuts to be made by municipal officials. In July of
this year, residents of Rutland also voted down an override that
would increase taxes $135 per household for the purpose of
increasing funds for the Wachusett Regional School District.
People who are in lower-income brackets often settle in low tax/low
service communities partly because they cannot afford to pay the
taxes in the more affluent communities. There results an economic
segregation far greater than prior to Proposition 2½.
We looked at three communities of similar size, but with very
different demographics.
Since 1990, the town of Marblehead, population 19,808, has collected
$5.1 million in additional tax revenues obtained by override votes.
The funds gained through these overrides enabled the town to build a
new school, repair roads and drainage systems, and provided much
needed updates to the town’s infrastructure. In the city of Gardner,
in contrast, all eight override ballot questions proposed since 1990
have failed. Gardner’s 20,354 residents simply cannot afford the
increased taxes. Where Marblehead was able to build a new school,
Gardner’s students are spread among several buildings, the oldest of
which was first opened in the same year William McKinley was elected
president. In Marblehead, 11.2 percent of the student population is
considered low income, while Gardner’s student population is 52.7
percent low income. This tale of two towns causes more affluent
families to look to settle in places like Marblehead so that they
can provide their children with the best possible education, leaving
the less affluent to live in communities more defined by budget
cuts, outdated school facilities, and poor bond ratings.
Pembroke is slightly smaller than Gardner, with a population of
17,959. Its population, however, is about the only thing that is
smaller than Gardner’s. Pembroke voted to adopt the Community
Preservation Act in November of 2006. Since then, it has been able
to raise almost $1 million ($951,116) to be used for historic
preservation, $39,056 for the creation of affordable housing,
$52,000 to build and renovate recreational facilities, and $38,509
for the acquisition of land for open space. Pembroke has also seen a
steady population growth, as well as a steady growth in the per
capita income of the town.
As some communities begin to be more appealing than others, and give
the appearance of investing in their communities, people are more
apt to settle in these municipalities. The loss of students from
districts because of school choice also reduces the amount of state
Chapter 70 funding that school districts receive. This also makes
the school district where the student resides pay the school
district to which the student transfers the per pupil cost of
educating the child. Low-income municipalities simply cannot keep up
with the funds that affluent communities have available to them.
Those who suffer from this are the students who live in these areas.
Having to attend a low-performing school district limits students
from low-income communities from being deemed qualified to attend
higher-performing colleges and universities and gain a stronger
footing in the workforce later on. School fees mean that
lower-middle class students often decline to participate in
extracurricular activities.
In an article in the current issue of CommonWealth, “Rich-poor
divide in high school sports,” [see link below] Bruce Mohl and Hari
Patel explain that in lower-income communities high school sports
participation is 43 percent below the statewide average due to high
participation fees. Meanwhile, in affluent communities it is 32
percent above the statewide figure, as they are able to lower their
athletic fees on students and supplement the cost with extra money
collected through overrides. This shows that the issue not only
causes
educational stratification across the Commonwealth, but also
creates a bar to student participation in non-academic realms of
school. Studies have shown that such extracurricular activities help
students learn interpersonal skills and lessons of teamwork that are
valuable throughout their adult life.
The same can be said for many art, music, theater, and other
programs across the state. Pembroke passed a Proposition 2½ override
in the spring of 2015 that allowed the district to keep funding the
music programs offered by its schools. In 2010, Gardner had to cut
its elementary school band program, three high school ensembles, and
many members of the coaching and instructional staff for athletic
and music programs, due to budget constraints.
The Massachusetts Community Preservation Act only adds to the
inequality fueled by Proposition 2½. The Community Preservation Act
is adopted by municipalities through a local ballot initiative. If
the community adopts the CPA, then residents receive a surcharge on
their property taxes for the purpose of either open space
acquisition, historic preservation, affordable housing, or
recreation. Communities that adopt the CPA and implement the
increase in taxes also receive matching grants from a state account
that is funded through a surcharge collected on all deed transfers
recorded at the time of a property sale. It is these state matching
grants, in particular, that underscore the inequities of the system.
Residents from every municipality pay into the fund through the use
of the Registry of Deeds, but only the affluent communities that are
able to adopt these tax increases are eligible to receive these
matching grants from the state. Thus, most of the money deposited in
the state trust from the Community Preservation Act is collected at
the expense of the less affluent; by providing funds from a state
endowment to fund open space land acquisition, poorer communities
are funding wealthier communities, which in turn increases their
property values and tax rates.
Cambridge has received a total of $45.7 million in state matching
grants since it adopted the CPA in 2002. This equates to Cambridge
receiving about 15 percent of all state matching funds annually,
while its residents only account for 1 percent of the amount of
money paid into the CPA fund. Meanwhile, the two largest cities in
the state, Boston and Worcester, contribute the most to the state
trust fund through their transactions at the registry of deeds about
$14.5 million annually but they receive no funds back because their
voters have not approved a CPA property tax surcharge. The Community
Preservation Act has unwittingly created a system in which the rich
are subsidized by the poor.
Another example of the problems that arise from the CPA is that 20
percent of the funds that have been collected through the law have
been used to purchase land for open space purposes. This increases
the value of all other land in the community and creates an even
greater affordability obstacle for anyone seeking to live in these
communities.
Proposition 2½ and the Community Preservation Act help affluent
communities thrive at the expense of the less affluent. Less
affluent communities simply cannot compete with the affluent
communities in the state when it comes to obtaining new businesses,
good credit ratings, or grant opportunities, because they just do
not have the extra money to invest in themselves that affluent
communities do.
Proposition 2½ and the Community Preservation Act are based on good
intentions. No one wants to argue against protection of the
taxpayer, preservation of historical sites, recreation facilities
for youth, or purchasing land for conservation. However, these
initiatives have unwittingly exacerbated class segregation in the
Commonwealth.
There is enough data in hand for the Legislature to review the
merits of Proposition 2½, the CPA, and perhaps other programs. If we
seek to address income inequality in Massachusetts, it is best if we
start by examining the laws which have been on the books, in some
cases, for many decades that are contributing to the problem.
While it will only be a start to fixing the problem, we suggest
creating a new form of state aid for those municipalities that have
not — mainly because of the tight budgets many residents live on —
taken advantage of state programs such as the CPA or approved
Proposition 2½ overrides. Why not set aside 25 percent of the funds
collected for the state CPA account from the fees collected on deed
transfers? This could then be distributed to communities that choose
to fund CPA-sanctioned projects, but simply cannot afford the tax
increase. This would advance the overall economic development of the
state by allowing less affluent areas to stand a chance at
attracting outside businesses.
Proposition 2½ and the Community Preservation Act have resulted in a
new form of class warfare in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Home
values in municipalities where these tax increases have been passed
have risen far more than those in municipalities that have not and
cannot pass them. While the rate at which these overrides are being
passed has decreased recently, they still have a large effect on
municipal policies in Massachusetts.
In Gardner, a house that was worth $118,000 in 1990 is now worth
$207,000; a house in Marblehead worth the same amount in 1990 is now
worth $298,000. In Fitchburg, a house worth $101,000 in 1990 is now
worth $126,500, but in Pembroke, a house of the same value in 1990
is now worth $405,000.
|
Municipality |
Home
Value in 1990 ($) |
Home
Value in 2015 ($) |
|
Springfield |
100,000 |
215,000 |
|
Fitchburg |
101,000 |
126,500 |
|
Gardner |
118,000 |
207,570 |
|
Orange |
105,000 |
134,300 |
|
Brookline |
120,000 |
477,120 |
|
Pembroke |
100,000 |
405,000 |
|
Marblehead |
115,500 |
297,800 |
These zip code class wars affect every single
citizen of the Commonwealth. In an era of heightened concern about
inequality, it’s time to take a stand against the inequality caused
by these two laws.
Lawrence S. DiCara, a former Boston City Council president, is a
partner at Nixon Peabody. Michael Nicholson is a master’s of public
policy student at the Center for Public Policy and Administration at
the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Obama wants to reengineer your neighborhood
By Marc A. Thiessen
This is what you get when you put a community organizer in the White
House — he tries to reorganize your community from Washington.
Apparently, President Obama thinks your neighborhood may not be
inclusive enough, so he has instructed his Department of Housing and
Urban Development to issue a new rule called Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing, which is designed to force communities to
diversify.
According to the Obama administration, in too many neighborhoods
“housing choices continue to be constrained through housing
discrimination, the operation of housing markets, [and] investment
choices by holders of capital.” (Yes, that is a quote from an actual
HUD document, not a bad undergraduate thesis on Karl Marx.)
Under Obama’s proposed rule, the federal government will collect
massive amounts of data on the racial, ethnic and socioeconomic
makeup of thousands of local communities, looking for signs of
“disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status,
national origin, or disability in access to community assets.” Then
the government will target communities with results it doesn’t like
and use billions of dollars in federal grant money to bribe or
blackmail them into changing their zoning and housing policies.
This is not about blocking housing discrimination, which has been
illegal since 1968. It is unlawful for someone to deny you a loan or
prevent you from buying a home because of your race, creed or color.
Socioeconomic status is — and ought to be — another matter. If you
want to buy a nice house in the suburbs, you have to be able to
afford it. Apparently, Obama thinks that’s unfair discrimination by
the “holders of capital.”
Putting decisions about how local communities are run in the hands
of federal bureaucrats is an assault on freedom. Local autonomy is
essential to liberty. As Milton Friedman put it in “Capitalism and
Freedom,” “If I don’t like what my local community does, be it in
sewage disposal, zoning or schools, I can move to another local
community. . . . If I don’t like what my state does, I can move to
another. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few
alternatives in this world of jealous nations.” Washington has no
business imposing decisions about zoning and housing policies on
thousands of local communities.
The proposed rule could become an issue in the presidential race.
HUD Secretary Julian Castro, the man assigned to implement this new
policy, is on everyone’s shortlist to be Hillary Clinton’s running
mate. Moreover, as National Review’s Stanley Kurtz points out,
collecting all the data will take time — which means decisions about
how to use that data will be up to the next president, whoever that
turns out to be.
Local communities across the United States will be up in arms over
this rule — and rightly so. The federal government should have no
say over whether your neighborhood is too Jewish, or too Caucasian,
or has too many married couples. But Republicans need to be very
careful. Democrats want the GOP to rail against this rule and see it
as an opportunity to paint the Republicans as the party that wants
to protect the wealthy, white suburbs and keep out poor people of
color.
Conservatives need to make this absolutely clear: We believe
Americans of all races, colors and creeds should be free to live
wherever they want. And we want to help them do so by unleashing
economic opportunity for those at the bottom so that more Americans
can get better educations and better jobs and ultimately move to
better neighborhoods.
Under Obama, those opportunities have been disappearing for
Americans at the bottom of our economy. While he talks a good game
about inequality, the poor have gotten poorer while the rich have
gotten richer on Obama’s watch. During the Obama recovery, Americans
in the top 5 percent of households (those with average incomes of
more than $320,000) were the only group in the United States to see
incomes rise from 2009 to 2013. Meanwhile, those worst hit were in
the bottom 20 percent, who saw their real incomes fall by 7 percent
on average. As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C.
Brooks explains , “Our putatively progressive president has
inadvertently executed a plutocratic tour de force.”
Having Washington micromanage the housing and zoning policies of
thousands of local communities is not going to change this. The
answer is not to force local governments to build affordable housing
in affluent communities. The answer is to restore upward mobility in
the United States so that more people can afford housing in affluent
communities.
Investor's Business Daily
December 21, 2015
Editorial
GOP Fully Funds Obama's Illegal Assault On School Discipline, Local
Zoning
Budget Betrayal: Republicans may not have been able to afford
school vouchers for poor kids, but they did manage to continue and
even add to funding for President Obama's radical education and
housing programs.
The House leadership's omnibus spending bill grants a generous 7%
increase in the budget for the Education Department's Office for
Civil Rights, which is pressuring school districts across the
country to adopt racial quotas in discipline.
The agency sought the $6 million bump to fund its "investigations" —
that is, witch hunt — of schools for alleged discrimination. Its
radical, out-of-control, race-mongering civil-rights office got
every penny it asked for and then some.
The unit is enforcing new national guidelines to assure that black
and white students are suspended or otherwise disciplined in the
same proportion, even if black pupils commit a disproportionate
share of school crime and infractions.
Schools that fail to comply with the new policy and continue to show
substantial "racial disparities" in suspensions and expulsions risk
losing federal funding.
The policy is wildly unpopular with teachers. Recent polling shows a
large majority oppose it, and unions complain that forcing teachers
to keep violent kids in classrooms jeopardizes teacher and student
safety.
The policy is also illegal. As former Education Department
civil-rights attorney Hans Bader points out, Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act, under which Obama's racial activists purport to act,
prohibits only actual discrimination, not neutral policies that have
a disparate impact.
In virtually all cases, Obama's investigators are making up
violations out of thin air. They're not enforcing equal rights;
they're really demanding equal outcomes.
So new Speaker Paul Ryan and the other concessionaires are actually
funding unlawful activities by the Obama regime.
Also spared the budget ax is the Housing and Urban Development
Department's radical project to subvert local zoning laws in the
U.S. through a new regulation called Affirmatively Furthering Fair
Housing.
HUD is re-engineering America's neighborhoods to fit the
administration's racialist agenda of what it thinks 1,200
communities around the country should look like. Under the new rule,
counties and cities that fail to loosen zoning restrictions on
low-income housing risk losing millions of dollars in federal
funding.
Over stern objections from municipalities, the Ryan budget provides
the funding to finance implementation of this massive,
unconstitutional intrusion into state and local sovereignty.
The Republican majority was supposed to use its power of the purse
to place a much-needed check on administrative and executive
overreach and power abuse by this regime. Instead, it's rewarding
the misconduct with massive new funding from taxpayers.
These establishment types — first Speaker John Boehner, now his
successor Ryan — make it very hard for voters to do the adult thing
and resist the flame-throwing fringe represented by Donald Trump and
others.
What is the point of a Republican majority if they continue to
capitulate to Democrats on everything?
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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