To: Members of the Massachusetts Senate
June 10, 2002
Re: Senate Ways & Means Budget
Give us a break!
With every new outrageous tax hike that's proposed, we get
more unsolicited requests for membership information as the foolishness on Beacon Hill accelerates.
Some of our new friends are outraged, others are having a
hard time grasping the absurdity of a "fiscal crisis" that follows the doubling of the state budget in the past twelve
years.
We know that the Senate is going to vote to raise taxes,
kill the initiative petition process by disregarding voters' commands on three ballot questions, and study or pretend to be
doing reforms and "government efficiency"; but kill a tax cut by the voters to put more of their
hard-earned money into a state slush fund?
Six senators want to hike the state income tax from 5% to
5.6%, and retroactively, in order to "replenish the 'rainy day fund'"! This fund, once a reasonably-sized emergency fund, was
enlarged in order to prevent income tax cuts, which the voters did themselves anyhow, and
now is being clung to or spent on new, long-term unaffordable programs while income taxes
are raised again. Do you think most of your constituents will buy this as a legitimate priority
during an economic downturn that affects them too?
Naturally the business-backed Mass. Taxpayers Foundation
backs the income tax rate hike to 5.6%; it opposed the ballot question in the first place and has provided legislators' cover
during the entire budget debate. MTF's credibility will wane because soon it will run out of
tax hikes on working people to recommend, and then it will be the business community's
turn.
MTF's "blended approach": raise taxes on working people as
much and as quickly as possible, then cut spending at your leisure, if ever. In reality, spending goes up, a real fiscal
crisis looms in the future, and in the end all taxpayers, people and business, are blended,
beaten, mashed, chopped, minced, whipped, ground, grated and liquified. Just pour them
and the Massachusetts economy down the drain.
If you follow Sen. Berry and support a retroactive income
tax hike to 5.6%, after the state's voters mandated 5%, you will be inviting the voter wake-up call that created
Proposition 2½ in 1980 and cost some legislators their positions in 1990. We are grateful to those of you
who will try during budget debate to save us some money for ourselves and get spending
under control. But maybe all we should be saying is, "go ahead, Berry; make our day." This
absurdity has to end sometime; see how far you can reach until you go too far.