Tax cuts? asks Tom Birmingham. What tax cuts? He says he hears no
demands for tax cuts, but plenty of demands for government programs.
The governor's goal of a $1.4 billion income tax cut through a
multiyear rollback of the rate to 5 percent, said the Massachusetts Senate president in
restating his opposition to any major tax cut, is "fiscally the same" in an
economic downturn as building that much spending into the budget.
What nonsense. There's a world of political difference.
Our lawmakers have shown over and over that they can and will raise
taxes much more readily than they will ever cut spending.
House Speaker Tom Finneran, though he does not accept the proposition
that raising the income tax rate to 5.95 percent was supposed to be temporary and does not
support Gov. Paul Cellucci's complete rollback, fully realizes the virtues of tax cuts,
not the least of which is forcing the state to be frugal. So he would cut the rate to 5.75
percent and leave open the possiblity of future reductions.
We're with the governor on this one, but between the speaker and the
Senate president we line up behind Finneran. He knows whose money he's spending.
Birmingham appears to think it belongs to the political establishment on Beacon Hill.