RML says …The game of playing to the left in order to get a dem nomination is clearly Patrick’s strategy. But, once he is nominated all his dirty laundry will be in full view . Keller and other journalists will not allow the candidate to morph into a centrist. Yes, another liberal taxachusetts Dukakoid will once again bite the dust.
Please share widely!
… but forget about electoral politics for a moment and tell me this: Is Patrick correct on the merits? Yes or no, and say why.
The taxpayers voted for a rollback of the prior state income tax increase. Patrick is not only opposed to the rollback but he also wants to also raise new taxes. Whether you want to raise taxes or not is not my point. It is almost impossible to be elected if you run on a platform of raising taxes. If he indeed wins the democratic primary he is destined to lose the general election because the independents will not accept higher taxes.Congrats to Kerry Healey .The dems self destruct once more.
If you wish to discuss the stimulous effect of lower taxes to the economy that is another subject.
So, you decided not to answer the question. That’s my point. You can argue all you want that it’s bad politics not to support the tax cut to 5.0%, and I think you may be right. But what’s good policy? Are you putting down Patrick on substantive grounds, or are you putting him down on appearance? And what do you care about more?
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I don’t think anyone really knows what the right taxation rate is. We don’t know how much waste there is in government, although we all suspect there’s a fair amount. We don’t really know what’s on the table for cuts when Reilly / Gabrieli (“I have a plan”) / Healey talk about rolling back the income tax rate.
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Should we just congratulate the 5% Three on their awesomest political skills, in spite of their lack of candor?
Its reducing spending that is the difficult answer. To start .Why do we have 351 police departments or 351 fire departments with guarantees up the wazu for life for these people, when your immigrant who works at Dunkin Donuts 10 times harder is not wanted and works from paycheck to paycheck . Why can’t we have more regionalization of all these governmental bodies. Schools, public works etc. Why not…because unions force it down our throats. Why does every school in the State have to be built based on prevailing wage rates when competetive wages are 35% less, which translates to higher property taxes. do you know that union electricians in Boston make $125,000 per year average.
Charlie, how about state police details on highways in Mass when in every other state some schmuck in a t shirt stands around with a flag directing traffic. Not to beat up cops but this is a typical answer to your question. If you wish i could go on but I hope you get the message. Deval Patrick needs to raaise taxes to feed those monster socialist unions that will vote for him.
I saw him duck the police details question myself and I’ll bet he’ll show the same “profile in courage” if you ask him about prevailing wage and your other points. Some of the candidates are not talking honestly to the people–Reilly, Healey, Mihos and, now Gabrieli–all promising more butter and lower taxes. And Patrick (and many of his supporters)is/are having problems with honesty also… with himself/theirselves about advocating higher taxes as being the death kneel of morden day politics…they think they can. They can’t.
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Nope, we has met the enemy and it is us. We, the voters, want a government that will educate our kids, fight crime, fight fires, build and maintain roads…and we don’t want to pay for it. It’s that simple.
I am sure that as a democrat Reilly probably supports prevailing wages, I really don’t know. But once you put a line in the sand on taxes , especialy with respect to the rollback it sends a message to the legislature and the voters . I agree that ideas to also reduce the cost of government must also be in any candidates plan and it must be part of the package.. But since 80% of the public is not focusing on this race why expose your hand for us political junkies .Let the other candidate put his foot in his mouth.
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School, police, fire, roads yes, I agree .but I don’t want to pay for those who expect the government to pay for everything else like uncontrolled municipal health plans and pensions, Why a $130,000,000 high school in Newton when Waltham built two for the same price. Duplication of the Mass Turnpike and State Highway staffs and maintenance and regionalization of government must be forced down the throats of these bloodsucker politicians .Forcing efficient government through modern day management practice is the key . If they don’t have the money to spend they can’t spend it and then have to be creative. Taxes to politicians is like cocaine. They will never kick the habit unless they go cold turkey.
Due to history, etc, Americans associate health insurance with employment. Given that association, moderates see that (a) if anything, the dollar amount is too small, and (b) that it will be effective in expanding health care, to (c) the employed (hint: those who deserve health care, according to some).
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Moderates will like the $295 surcharge. If Deval tries to shift to the middle after winning the primary, supporting this bill won’t hurt him. Nor will Cape Wind, methinks.
The income tax issue will be huge come November – perhaps THE issue of the campaign. Why? Oh, I don’t know. . .maybe because it has been the single, biggest campaign issue since the rollback question appeared in the ballot in 2000!
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Voters are not interested in a great deal of education on the “merits” of opposing the rollback that they approved. They know what they are getting for their tax dollars and they want a return to the previous 5.0% rate (and the rate they were promised would be restored).
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On this issue, Reilly has given us a shot at reclaiming the corner office. Even late-out-of-the-gate Chris Gabrieli understands that Democrats need to respect the voters on this issue, learning a lesson from the O’Brien-Gabrieli defeat of ’02.
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I don’t see where Deval Patrick can go on this one. This is the reality of running from the left in a centrist state. You get all of the benefits of liberal activists in the primary and all of the burdens in the general elections. RML is right. . .there will be no tacking back to the center in the general. That’s what Scott and Shannon tried. The voters weren’t buying it then and they won’t be buying it in November.
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Reilly made a decision consistent with his moderate record to travel a more difficult path through the Democratic primary in order to present a viable candidacy in the General Election. It was a good call and, in my opinion, the right call.
How does any of this relate to Romney’s veto of the $295/employee tax on businesses that don’t provide health insurance? Do you think it’s “smart politics” for Massachusetts? Do you think it hurts Deval Patrick to support that portion of the bill (and oppose Romney’s veto)?
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To me, it just looks like your comment is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand in this post. Clarify?
How hard is it to link to the correct damn blog post?
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Romney/Healey have cut income taxes, but in order to pay for that they’ve hammered us with higher property taxes and higher fees. Yeah folks, you can call it what you want, but if you’re paying higher fees, you’re essentially paying a higher tax for services.
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Dems need to do a better job of making that clear to voters. Deval Patrick has the right idea and is the only candidate who is being candid and honest with people about taxes.
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Instead of blowing sunshine up people’s…. Deval is asking the right questions: What kind of services do we want? What is the most effective way of paying for them? Right now we HAVE an administration that claims they can govern without raising tax revenue, in fact they want to lower it. But we all know this is a big lie. Dems like Reilly are doing nothing more than carrying water for the Republicans on this issue.
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You can’t get something for nothing. Candidates who say that they will be able to govern without maintaining the tax rate are selling snake oil. At least Deval Patrick has the integrity to speak frankly with voters about this issue, and not just tell people what they want to hear.
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It’s called l-e-a-d-e-r-s-h-i-p.
“Dems need to do a better job of making that clear to voters.” Newsflash: the public has considered all of these arguments and guess what? They want their income tax rate returned to 5.0%. I realize that the liberal wing of the party wishes it were otherwise, but it is true.
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Would it have been irresponsible to continue the rollback during the budget crunch of 2002-2005? Absolutely. But when do we, as Democrats, ever stand for fiscal restraint? If not now, when?
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Certainly not during the 1990s, when the Democrat-controlled legislature expanded government at the rate of record-setting tax revenues. They left ordinary citizens vulnerable and the budget in disrepair when the shoe inevitably dropped. And what was their solution to this problem of their own making? “Here, Governor Romney: we’ll grant you special powers to make the tough cuts that we will not make on our own.” And you wonder why voters do not trust Democratic candidates for Governor to serve as a “check and balance” on the legislature? This is the well-deserved public perception of our ability to manage the budget.
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Deval’s supporters like to make his opposition to restoring the income tax rate some kind of politically courageous act. Really? I find it hard to believe that he is offending his liberal base with this position. They are correct, however, that it comes with a cost – in the general election, that is. The voters don’t need “educating.” They are just as smart as the rest of us and equally capable of making up their minds on this issue. What good is it that Deval is “asking the right questions” when he has already settled on an answer? That is like saying, “Hey, I just ordered pepperoni pizza for everybody, now tell me what kind of toppings you like.”
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We have to stop telling people what they should think and listen to what they are trying to say. That’s what Tom Reilly is trying to do.
That doesn’t get us anywhere. One could just as easily say that the other candidates are pandering to anti-tax voters. We are all adults here and we can surely have this conversation without questioning peoples’ motives.
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Here’s my question. Can we lower the tax rate to 5% without seeing an even bigger increase in property taxes? We haven’t been able to do this since they lowered the rate to 5.3%. What’s different about now that we can?
We are all adults, which is why we can have a discussion regarding the merits of our respective candidates’ positions, including their political motivations. For example, what the previous poster called “carrying the Republican’s water,” I see as leadership on Reilly’s part for carrying the voter’s mandate. There is room to respectfully disagree with each other. And believe it or not, the candidates do have motives.
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I never said that honoring the voters’ mandate to return the income tax rate to 5.0% was going to be easy. I said it was necessary for Democrats to earn the trust of voters who do not believe that we can manage the state’s financial affairs responsibly. It will be challenging. We would have to work with what we have and show voters that our priorities are better. Then, we will be in a position to credibly lead the discussion of what, if any, resources are still necessary.
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As for property taxes, I would never promise that they will remain unaffected. However, with the state’s revenues increasing at 7% annually each of the past two years, we are in a better position to make good on the income tax rollback now than we were when we froze it four years ago.
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I do not see a Democratic candidate being able to make a viable case for what the public perceives as raising taxes in November. We must take the more challenging road if we are ever going to neutralize the issue that hurt us the most in every gubernatorial election since 1990.
You wrote that reducing the income tax is necessary to “credibly lead the discussion of what, if any, resources are still necessary”, but I don’t see the reduction as giving the Democrats more credibility; it could merely give credibility to the low-tax mantras of the GOP and make people think the Repubs were right all along when they criticized the Dems for resisting reducing the tax more.
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I wish people paid more attention to public policy, but the fact is that they probably pay the most attention during elections, which means that now is a great time for Deval to be challenging the conventional wisdom, DDD (Deval Delegate Disclaimer). There is no doubt it is a challenging path, but I honestly feel that Reilly’s message, whatever its intent, plays into GOP ideas about governance whereas Deval’s has a chance to shift the discussion.
The income tax was raised by the Democrat-controlled legislature during the budget crisis of the early ’90s. At the time, legislative leaders (Democrats) assured voters that the rate would be restored to 5.0% when tax revenues were healthy again. Well, tax revenues not only rebounded nicely, they set new records in the late ’90s, far exceeding budget estimates. That is when the legislature failed the Democratic party. Instead of returning the income tax rate to 5.0% when it would have been far less painful, they spent virtually every record-setting penny that flowed into the state’s coffers. Then the next budget crisis hit and that exponential growth in state spending during the late ’90s made the budget cuts even more painful. Unfortunately, this is the legacy that the Democratic party has had to bear and that our gubernatorial candidates have been saddled with ever since. Why is Tom Reilly different? Because he is the first Democrat to say that it is time to right a wrong that the publicly correctly attributes to Democratic leadership. (Late-out-of-the-gate Chris Gabrieli apparently favors the rollback too, but that is not where O’Brien-Gabriel were in ’02 when they lost the race.) Independent, Unenrolled voters – the people who will decide this election – will correctly see Reilly’s position as a break from a bad legacy that our party carries. With all due respect, it is Patrick’s position that plays into the public’s well-documented reservations, based on the facts above, about Democratic management of the state’s finances.
Pandering? I don’t think so. Pandering would be saying you’re for the tax roll back, but not saying how you expect to accomplish it.
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Oh, right. What exactly has the AG said on this?
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Speaking of carrying water for the Republicans, the whole tax and spend liberal wing stuff you’re trying to pin on Deval Patrick supporters is just ridiculous and a lame attempt to divert attention away from the truth: Reilly has no plan. If he does, let’s see it.
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Down thread eury13 sums it up perfectly:
Democrats have forgotten how to be leaders. It involves running on principles and values, and when people do it well, voters respond. Trying to outflank the Republicans on the right doesn’t work and it turns people off to the party as a whole.
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Exactly right and this is why Deval Patrick’s common sense approach on this subject appeals to voters across the board.
We lowered the income tax and what happened? Everyone’s property taxes skyrocketted. The average family’s total tax burden has increased because of this, even as income taxes have gone down.
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It’s all connected. Lowering the income tax is almost guaranteed to raise your property taxes. Right now, property taxes pay for a greater share of local budgets than at any time since 1982. Towns can’t cut back services — people want roads, snow removal, schools, fire, police, etc — so as local aid decreases, property taxes go up disproportionally.
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Supporting the rollback may be good politics, but it’s not good policy. Not if for every dollar the rollback saves me, I’ve got to send two back to my town.
It’s about more than just raising taxes. It’s also reducing services that people truly care about. That’s what people have to be made to understand.
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The difference in taxes for a 5% rate vs. the current rate is probably $200. But are people really happier that there are less people entering the teaching profession, that these are less cops on the street, that the elderly can’t be given exemptions because it would bust the budget.
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Or how about making the link that, barring tax revenue from the state, cities and towns turn to MORE DEVELOPMENT to get their revenue. If there’s something that people rally against, surely it’s development.
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People have to be made aware that all this stuff is connected, and that “starving the beast” isn’t the correct policy.
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I know it’s a hard sell when you have Howie Carr talking about welfare queens on a daily basis (and most people seem to be against higher taxes because they think the higher taxes are directly going into the pockets of people who are “living off the system”. But the sale must be made. People need to understand that someone working 40 hours digging ditches deserves to have a decent education for their kids — and that in fact Massachusetts’ constitution requires this.
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By dancing around the issue you play into the hands of Grover Nordquist. Has anyone read his article on Massachusetts Proposition 2.5 law that basically says that the law will allow people to “group themselves” based on what they can afford to pay? In other words, blatant class segregation.
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I thought Massachusetts was a little better than that, I didn’t think that so many people felt that people with less money should be given worse opportunities, that they get what they deserve.
Sure, I’m not for development for development’s sake, but how can you say “if there’s something that people rally against, it’s development?” It’s like Paul Tsongas used to say: you can’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
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Development is the solution to affordable housing. Development creates jobs. Development generates tax revenue which supports our public services. Development is our past, present, and future.
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Massachusetts is the only state in the nation to lose population each of the past two years. We are losing jobs. We are uncompetitive and unaffordable. Government cannot solve these problems alone – not remotely. The Democratic solution has got to include the private sector.
I don’t have any problem with development; I offered it up as something that people hate even more than taxes — a way to reach the “lower my taxes” crowd.
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Our problems with development have more to do with class segregation than anything. Why do I say this? Because even though the price of housing is ridiculous in many parts of this state, people are still willing to sell out tens of thousands of dollars more per year to live in a town that has no lower-class people in it.
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And they’ll pay through the nose to make sure that their town stays that way too, because a few hundred bucks extra is cheap dollars compared to the “riff-raff” moving into their towns (their own code words).
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Blocking development is a way of making sure that a town you live in never, ever, ever allows people into it who are a lower class than you. There are plenty of code words — “keeping the character of my town”, etc., but it comes down to “I’ve got mine, you can’t have it”.
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Personally, I think that the people who oppose development –with things like towns with no multi-family housing, 2-acre lots, etc, — should be paying a lot more for that privilege.
RML,
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I think that you are probably right about the politics of the income tax rollback. Our Republican friends always have the upper hand on the tax question, especially when the question is viewed from a very pure self-interest analysis.
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Having said that, do you have an opinion as to whether rolling back the income tax is sound public policy given today’s fiscal realities? Should this be a consideration for the candidates and the voters?
Anti-tax played well in the 90s. It doesn’t anymore, at least not in MA. It was already losing ground in our last gubernatorial election, but we nominated a weak candidate who didn’t know how to talk about taxes. Now, four years later, anti-tax is pretty much dead as a winning issue. Lower income taxes just mean higher property taxes. If people want taxes that are really lower, and not replaced by extra user fees and property taxes and so on, they need to vote for fewer or less expensive services at the local level, primarily. A candidate that knows how to talk about this issue (like Deval Patrick) can easily make anti-income-tax a loser for his opponent. We’re in 2006 now. Pay attention.
Listen, we all agree that Romney’s promise of cuts without pain was empty rhetoric, but we must also own up to the fact that the electorate does not blame Mitt Romney for the budget woes. They blame the Democratic legislature and that is a burden that the Democratic nominee will have to carry into November.
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Property taxes and fees have unquestionably risen as a result of the budget debacle. However, I seriously doubt that voters will prefer sending more of their tax dollars to Beacon Hill than to the Town Tax Collector. Who do you think they trust: 300 legislators or their town meeting?
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Plus, this assumes that voters will believe that an increase in their state income tax will actually produce local tax relief. It may in some instances, since some mayors would rather campaign on a record of having cut taxes, but there are no guarantees. In which case, some taxpayers will be facing higher local taxes and higher state taxes.
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The tax issue lives and breathes. Tom Reilly is correct to chart a new path for Democrats on this issue, since the alternative path leads to defeat.
Pushing a rollback to 5% isn’t a new path. It’s a Republican path. If I wanted to elect a Republican, I’d vote for one. In the meantime, I’m sick of Democrats pandering to the right because they think that’s what will get them elected. We’ve lost the last two presidential elections doing just that.
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Democrats have forgotten how to be leaders. It involves running on principles and values, and when people do it well, voters respond. Trying to outflank the Republicans on the right doesn’t work and it turns people off to the party as a whole.
You left out the important qualifier: “for Democrats” You may not agree with Tom Reilly’s position (in fact, you clearly don’t), but how can you say that it is not new for a Democrat or principled? “Principles and values” are subjective terms. I believe moderation is a virtue. Most voters seem to agree, since Unenrolled voters (who make up more than 50% of the electorate) have rejected the more liberal candidate in each of the last four gubernatorial elections. (And I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t because they weren’t liberal enough.) It should not be Democratic heresy to say, “Hey, maybe we should give voters the income tax rate that they mandated, prove to them that we can do a better job with what they have given us, and then discuss have a discussion about new/different resources on the basis of that well-earned trust.” Instead, we shop the same tired party line, “With more resources, we can do a better job.” Generally speaking, who can’t do more with more? There is nothing unprincipled about Tom Reilly’s positions. I call it leadership and it has come with a cost. Tom Reilly would have had a far easier path to the Democratic nomination if he had staked out positions on the left. Instead, he chose a more difficult path – one that, I believe, is more consistent with the mindset of the general electorate. I agree that Democrats have forgotten how to lead, but I believe Reilly is on the right path.
However, I seriously doubt that voters will prefer sending more of their tax dollars to Beacon Hill than to the Town Tax Collector. Who do you think they trust: 300 legislators or their town meeting?
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For those people whose vote would be swayed by their feelings about how taxes personally hit them, the pain is much more likely coming from their property taxes. The issue isn’t whether the money is going to their town or to the state (which then uses it to pay their town), the issue is how much of their money is going. Income taxes are fairer than property taxes. For these voters, property taxes have gone up very painfully in the past few years. They know the income tax is a percentage of income, and predictable. They can tell that cutting the income tax rate by 0.3% isn’t going to make up for another rise in property taxes.
With respect, Cos. I do not think MA voters either (a) have stopped caring about taxes as a voting issue, or (b) make a direct connection between reducing the income tax rate and seeing other taxes and fees rise. A rise in property tax bills, for example, is probably blamed by most people on a rise in property values. Patrick has a very tough challenge ahead to win while staring down the choice of a majority of voters, playing into many preconceptions of a tax tax tax Massachusetts Democrat, and promising to raise taxes relative to his opponents. (And, yeah, I know he’s just promising not to lower taxes, but it will be presented as an increase in the election follies).
Three short years ago, the Massachusetts electorate came pretty close to eliminating the income tax. http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/elebalm/balmpdf/balm2002.pdf
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Anti-tax is alive and well across the Commonwealth. What Dems need to do is pledge fiscal responsibility. On thr federal level, this means calling the Republicans out clearly and consistently on their borrow and spend policies. On the state level, it means clearly spelling out your spending plan AND what you will do in the face of unexpected fiscal bad news. For Reilly and Gabrielli, it means saying what will be cut or where revenue will come from to pay for the cut. For Patrick, it means explaining when (if ever) would be the right time to implement the referendum decision of the voters. So far, I don’t think any of our candidates has made a compelling, candid pitch on the tax question.
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As for people voting for fewer local services, those local services have pretty much been cut to the bone as the governor and the legislature have dramatically cut local aid over the past three years while failing to give cities and towns any tools to solve problems like the rising cost of health insurance for municipal employees or inflexilbity of proposing local option taxes. If people want really lower taxes, they will vote for tax cuts wherever they find them. They could vote for fewer local services AND/Or fewer state services. They might vote for the state rep, senate or guberntorial candidate who says she’ll cut DPH 20% and pour the savings into local aid, or income tax relief, or MWRA subsidies. The point is that nothing is sacred in terms what the voters might respond to. The idea that anti-tax is dead is simplistic and unsupported by any empircal data. All the Democrats are going to need to take a thoughtful, sophisticated approach to have credibility against the simplistically anti-tax Kerry Healey.
Whence the belief that lower income taxes means higher property taxes?
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Unless you are overly dependent on state aid, i.e., inside 128, there really is no cause and effect. Since we get virtually no local aid or Ch. 70 or 90 money, we are better able to set our own budgets. Some towns down MY way, for instance, actually held UNDERRIDE votes to DECREASE the tax rate.
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Ask yourself this – why does Cambridge pay in the $20 thousands for a part-time councillor – when on Cape, an annual stipend of about $2,000 is sufficent?
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Boston area property taxes are high for two reasons – first, you replicate services that the state already provides and you overpay your municipal officials – elected and appointed (really – if you cut the Cambridge councillor stipend to $10,000 – do you think nobody would RUN?)
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Secondly, you have an overabundance of real estate controlled by educational and charitable organizations. Why not amend state law to make only actual campuses and sanctuaries tax exempt, and charge property tax on church and school owned investment property? These blocks of stores are already in unfair comeptition with private sector real estate owners now – a Starbucks is a Starbucks, whether it’s renting from a developer or the Archdiocese.
I am one of the taxpayers that do not support the rollback in any way shape or form. It is irresponsible. Most people I know do not support it. Will someone who does support the rollback honestly answer this? If my wife and I have an AGI of $100,000 how much will I save by rolling back the taxes to 5.3% to 5%,( and I believe it is a step down to 5.15 then to 5%) So the way I am figuring it is aiwht an AGI of 100 K per year at the 5.3 % id pay $5300.00, at 5% Id pay $5000. WOW a savings of $300.00 per year, or %5.76 per week, I can get 2 dunkin turbos per week. Damn roll em back now. So what does a family of 3 with an AGI of 50K per year get.
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By the way my property taxes have gone up 50%, i was payiong 2000 per year now it is 3003 per year, so assuming my property taxes do not increase in the future it will take me 6 years to “recoup” the extra I have ben paying with my income tax savings.
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Hey honestly keep my 5 bucks a week, ill forgo my DD turbos ……..fix the schools.