Gov. Paul Cellucci and House Speaker Thomas M.
Finneran squared off last night over a move to roll the state's income
tax back to 5 percent.
But in contrast to two prior debates Cellucci had
with opponents on the measure, the cordial discussion with Finneran on
WLVI TV-56 focused mostly on how much the two agree, evolving at one
point into what the speaker called a "love fest."
"I'm thinking five years down the road, 10 years
down the road," said Cellucci, who argues that across-the-board
income tax relief will keep the Bay State's economy humming. "You
have to protect the economy."
Finneran agreed the state's 5.85 percent income tax
rate should be returned to 5 percent, where it stood before the
recession of the late 1980s forced tax hikes to rescue the state budget.
But the speaker, sounding his lone true point of
disagreement with Cellucci, urged caution in the face of volatile
financial markets, unrest in the Middle East and spiking fuel prices.
"A good leader has to ask what-if,"
Finneran said, calling for the tax cut to be linked to economic
indicators rather than being implemented automatically over three years.
"Why risk everything we've achieved? We've got a great thing going.
I don't want to roll the dice."
Cellucci said tax relief can only be assured by
passing Question 4, noting that Finneran's House-supported tax cut plan
is expected to die in the Senate. [It already was killed in the
Senate -- CLT Editor]
"You trust the Legislature, I trust the
voters," Cellucci told Finneran.
The two briefly jousted over Cellucci's contention
that the state's $4 billion in reserves can help offset the tax cut's $1
billion cost in revenues.
"That's a fatally flawed argument,"
Finneran said, saying Cellucci himself has called the unemployment
insurance trust fund "sacred."
Moderator Jon Keller also put Cellucci on the spot
when he referred to Big Dig cost overruns and Cellucci's own personal
debt, asking the governor: "Why should we trust your budgetary
forecasting skills?"
Finneran may have done the most damage to Question
4's hard-core opposition when he scoffed at arguments that the estimated
$200 to $470 annual savings for the average household is meaningless.
"That's a lot to any ordinary person,"
Finneran said. "Two hundred bucks is pretty good dough."
Cellucci's rhetoric was toned down measurably from
his first two debates, in which he aggressively took on Democrat Steve
Grossman and state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien.