PS. Once we have the required rollcall vote on the tax increase
it will be immediately posted on our website and mailed out to all members in the upcoming newsletter (which we just
put on hold until this taxpayer rip-off is concluded).
BOSTON (AP) The budget process that began last year as the
state's surging economy sputtered and collapsed is grinding to a close with lawmakers bracing for a final round of cuts
and a tax vote.
The House and Senate plan to give final approval this week
to a $1 billion tax package, perhaps as early as today. By weeks' end, the Legislature could approve a budget with an
additional $300 million in reductions.
Acting Gov. Jane Swift is then expected to veto up to $300
million more to close a $600 million gap that opened after both the House and Senate approved their initial budget plans.
If Swift does not veto the $300 million, the budget would be
balanced with reserve funds.
"It's always painful to see programs that you worked for
over the years being cut," said Sen. Richard Moore, D-Uxbridge. "Unlike the federal government, we don't have a printing
press."
Late Tuesday, House and Senate budget negotiators hammered
out a compromise tax package by agreeing to a new tax rate for capital gains of 12 percent for the first year and
5.3 percent after that. They also agreed to make the tax retroactive to May
instead of January.
The tax package would also freeze the state income tax rate
at 5.3 percent, create a 75-cent per pack tax hike on cigarettes, trim the personal income tax deduction and end the
deduction for charitable gifts.
The Legislature is expected to approve the tax package and
ship it to acting Gov. Jane Swift, who has already pledged to veto it. Lawmakers could then override the veto.
Budget negotiators trying to hammer out a compromise budget
are hoping to release the document Wednesday or Thursday.
If the budget comes out before midnight on Wednesday, the
Legislature could debate and approve it on Friday. The compromise budget cannot be amended. Lawmakers can only
vote in favor or against it.
If lawmakers approve the plan on Friday or Saturday, it
would give Swift 10 days to make vetoes before the end of the Legislature's formal session on July 31.
Barbara Anderson of the anti-tax group Citizens for Limited
Taxation criticized both Swift and Democratic lawmakers, saying the two sides are providing each other with political
cover, Swift by making tough vetoes and the Democrats by allowing her to maintain her "no
new taxes" pledge.
"If we taxpayers weren't the ones who were paying they could
go and spend their little hearts out," Anderson said. "Unfortunately we are the ones who are going to pay for their
lack of ability to control the budget."
Human Service advocates worried that core state services
could be hurt by the process of going line-item by line-item through the House and Senate versions of the budget and
agreeing to the lower spending figure.
The House budget, for example, spends $2 million less than
the Senate on AIDS services, they said.
Richard Lord of the business group Associated Industries of
Massachusetts praised the capital gains plan, saying that making the tax hike retroactive "would have perversely
punished individuals who made important financial decisions based on current tax law.
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The Boston Globe
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
A pathetic budget plan
By Scot Lehigh
There's a word for the phony budget plan House Speaker
Thomas Finneran and Senate President Thomas Birmingham arrived at this week.
Pathetic.
Faced with a new budget gap of about $600 million, the two
former football players have essentially decided to drop back and punt to Acting Governor Jane Swift. Having cut $300
million, they'll maintain the fiction that the budget is balanced, saying that the rest of the gap
will be plugged with rainy-day dollars.
But because Finneran has little interest in tapping the
reserve funds further, the real plan is to let Swift use her veto pen to cut enough spending to close the hole.
That performance redounds to the discredit of both men. Yes,
these are difficult and challenging times. But it's a basic responsibility of the Legislature to deliver a balanced budget
to the governor. That task should be made easier by this simple fact of political arithmetic:
The Democrats have such overwhelming majorities in both the House and the Senate that
they can override Swift's vetoes at will. That means they are free to impose a budget entirely
of their own devising.
That reality initially led them to deride as gimmicks many
of Swift's budget-balancing proposals -- though they have since quietly adopted several important aspects of her plan.
This week, after a month of wrangling between the House and Senate, they came to an
impasse that speaks to their failure as the Legislature's governing duo.
Now, both men regularly blame the tax cut passed by the
voters in 2000 as a major reason for the state's budget problems. But at this point the Legislature has taken back, in
its tax-raising package, almost the entirety of the $1.2 billion that Question 4 cut in 2000.
Yet even with those new taxes factored in, the two have been
unable to hammer out a balanced budget. Rendering the exercise the more pitiful is that the numbers are, relatively
speaking, small. Bringing the budget into the black means reducing the
bottom line by less than 1.5 percent. Or finding an extra $300 million.
Here's the oddest part of the whole episode in eyewash. Both
Birmingham and Finneran see themselves as strong, tough, effective leaders. In mid-May, after the House passed its
spending plan, the speaker treated reporters to an hour-long bout of budget braggadocio.
Awarding his obedient House charges an A-, the speaker said: "The process was by far and
away the best process that I've ever seen. It was a very impressive performance." As for
himself? No one else could have handled the fiscal crisis with such credibility, Finneran said.
Although personally more modest, Birmingham is running for
governor based on his record as Senate president. At debates with his Democratic rivals, the Chelsea Democrat is fond of
noting that while others have the luxury of proposing without the proof of performance, his
Senate role means he has to deliver real, workable solutions. That claim, like Finneran's
self-regard, rings ever more hollow in the face of the Legislature's budgetary failure. (And,
lest one forget, this year's fiscal flimflam follows the fiasco of last year, when
the budget was five months late.)
Now, to be fair to Birmingham, he has been a dedicated
advocate for education and health care. Still, it's one thing to be an ardent legislative champion for a cause, quite another
to be convincing as a candidate for governor. The question about the Senate president has always
been: Can this heartfelt liberal balance his progressive politics with the fiscal
discipline that must be the watchword for any successful governor?
When the Senate passed a budget last month that, according
to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, will increase total state spending by $951 million over the previous
year's bottom line, observers got a good indication of just how difficult
Birmingham finds it to reconcile those competing imperatives. This week's exercise in Potemkin village budgeting
will only add to those doubts.
As a gubernatorial candidate, Birmingham is clearly fading,
losing ground to State Treasurer Shannon O'Brien and former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich. But for the Democrats, the
fallout from this failure by Beacon Hill's dysfunctional duo runs deeper than just one sagging
candidacy.
Can a party whose powerful legislative leaders can't meet
their basic responsibilities in an honest and timely way really expect voters to turn the Corner Office over to them as well?
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