Another GLORIOUS ALLCAPSACOLOR press release from Tom Reilly, bashing Patrick on taxes. If you didn’t see this one coming, I don’t know what you expected — not that a bit of contrast isn’t well within bounds. And if Patrick gets through September 19, Healey is going to hit so hard with this, there’ll barely be time for “Survivor” on TV.
That being said, we can truth-squad one intentionally false impression left by the press release:
[Patrick has proposed] Levying a crippling payroll tax on Massachusetts businesses. During the debate on the proposed health care law, Patrick came out in favor of a proposal that would have levied a 5-7% payroll tax on companies, drawing harsh criticism from the business community because it would have put the state at a competitive disadvantage, costing jobs and economic growth.[My emphasis.]
OK, that makes one think that the proposed tax (asessment, whatever) was across the board, on all businesses — which is absolutely false. Patrick endorsed the MassACT! proposal, which would have indeed put an assessment on businesses that don’t insure their workers. And by the way, some businesses supported that plan. The “business community” was hardly unanimous. Patrick has since pledged to work within the $295 assessement, negotiated at great length in the new law.
Reilly’s camp also lists Patrick as flirting with increases in the local meals tax, the health care assessment, the cigarette tax, and the income tax.
Now, every attack is an opportunity. Patrick’s response in the past has been to call the “no-new-taxes” pledge a “gimmick”, and to talk about lowering property taxes. And indeed, there’s a record of failure with the Romney administration, since they’ve resorted to other methods of boosting revenue, and property taxes have gone up.
But there are other lines of attack. For instance …
- Patrick might ask Reilly, “So, you think that Wal-Mart shouldn’t have to pay for its employees’ health care? You think the rest of us should pay for Wal-Mart?”
- I wouldn’t apologize one bit for suggesting the cigarette tax might be raised. “What, do you think we should make cigarettes cheaper?”
- Meals taxes: “So, you would continue to starve cities and towns [thanks Christy!], like Romney and Healey?”
Etc. etc. Now, these are my lame, off-the-cuff talking points. But the point remains: In responding to attacks like this, you can’t just say, “No I won’t.” You’ve got to attack the question itself.
I’m not under any illusions: This issue was always going to lose votes for Patrick, simply because the lines of attack are so well-established, so easy. But undecideds are looking for boldness. I might expect Patrick to go on the offensive, aggressively re-framing and re-directing the tax debate. He won’t get all those votes back, but maybe he can turn the conversation a different way if he shows fire and backbone.
UPDATE: In case anyone cares, here’s how I feel about the substance of Reilly’s four attack points:
- Why not let municipalities have a meal tax? They may well decide they don’t need it, or want to be competitive with the next town over. What’s a few extra pennies at The 99, anyway? No biggie.
- I support the assessment on non-insuring employers. I don’t like subsidizing them for not taking care of their employees.
- Cigarette taxes are just great — keep demand down. They should be a luxury.
- As far as I can tell, we can leave the income tax alone, barring a crisis. We can’t afford a cut. (pdf)
Again, everyone and his third cousin’s uncle should have seen this one coming — I’d damn well hope that Deval and his staff have, and have rebuttals in place.
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Geez, if someone put Tom Reilly in a dress, he could easily be mistaken for Kerry Healey — at least on this issue.
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Politics of the “old” v. politics of the “bold” — who do you think will capture the hearts and minds of Massachusetts voters?
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Well, Patrick had better be bold in dealing with this. He decided to take a principled but possibly unpopular stand, but he can’t waste precious effort defending himself unless he’s simultaneously attacking.
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If you want to see how this is done, just look at the Republicans: Everything is an opportunity, everything is good news, everything puts your opponent on the defensive. It’s very clever, really.
when it comes to cigarettes? This is another reason to tax them steeply.
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Bush has shown you can take an unpopular stand on some things and still get votes IF you do it with conviction, even defiance. No retreat, baby, no surrender. And no apologies, equivocations, parsing.
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And, yes, it’s time for counterattack. Love the Wal-Mart point!
the trouble is, poor adults addicted to cigarettes aren’t. So, raising the price of cigs may reduce the percentage of young people who become addicted, but it serves as a regressive tax on adults who are addicted. After all, a guy with a $100,000/yr job doesn’t smoke 10 times as many packs a week as a guy with a $10,000/yr job.
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It’s a dillema. Add to the fuel today’s Globe article that points out that the amount of nicotine in cigs has increased 10% in the past few years, making them more addictive than ever.
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No television ads. No billboards. High taxes. No smoking in restaurants, government buildings, workplaces, or bars. Few (if any!) cigarette vending machines. What’s left?
<blockquoteNo television ads. No billboards. High taxes. No smoking in restaurants, government buildings, workplaces, or bars. Few (if any!) cigarette vending machines. What's left?
You want cigarette vending machines, so a 9 year old can get his fix? You want TV ads and billboards, so Camel can advertise to kids yet again? You want low taxes, because cigarettes are so great and don’t cost taxpayers billions of dollars in medicade/care health costs?
You want them in bars and restaurants, so everyone (including employees) have to get second hand smoke – which, according to some research, is almost as bad as the real thing? You want them in government buildings? Are you insane?
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Tax em. Tax em. Tax em.
I think (and I reckon stomv doesn’t need me to carry his water, but what the heck) he was suggesting that Government has taxed and regulated cigarettes to the point that further action will have little marginal effect to prevent smoking.
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Further taxes will somewhat reduce smoking but for the most part won’t affect the habit of that group which smokes the most–the poor.
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So, raise taxes and you’ve simply taxed the poor.
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Raise them excessively and you’ll create a black-market and eliminate a very lucarative revenue source to the state.
that was close to my point.
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As far as all current MA government regulations on cigarettes (not including taxation!): I agree with what’s been done. Eliminating ads, smoking in public, et al are great steps toward reducing smoking. Bravo.
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As for cigarette tax: that’s more difficult, precisely because while (a) it (should) reduce smoking by youngsters, it also (b) serves as a regressive tax, burdening the poor far more than the rich. So on balance, I think high cigarette taxes are good, but I also think its important to recognize their shortcoming and unfairness.
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Nowhere in my earlier post did I advocate any public policy position. I simply wrote about possible reprocussions of policies. Don’t buy yourself a Jump to Conclusions Mat.
Hoist the main with the message that “hell yeah, we’ll raise taxes. Ok, maybe we won’t raise ’em all but we sure won’t lower them.”
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Yeah…get back to me how that works out.
How about this:
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“Property taxes too low? Thought so.”
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“Wal-Mart needs the help, folks.”
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“Poor people don’t need doctors.”
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“The cost of cigarettes is spiralling out of control!”
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“Get used to the potholes.”
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“Hey, No New Taxes got us elected in the past!” (Until it didn’t.)
And, I can’t find the link for the stat, but it’s something like 76% of frequent Wal-Mart shoppers voted for George Bush and 90% of infrequent Wal-Mart shoppers voted for John Kerry.
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It’s a political mistake, IMHO, to attack Wal-Mart too vigorously. A lot of folks like them low, low prices.
Kevin Drum is a smarter and more reasonable person than I, and he writes better, too. Read what he says about that.
BTW, which demographic smokes most? Same folks who play the lottery: Low income folks.
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Why pussyfoot around? The tax is $15.10 per carton now. Make it $151 per carton. Then people will stop smoking. The reason not to raise the tax so high? People may stop smoking and Government would really, really miss the cigarette tax income. Cigarette smoking causes cancer AND hypocrites and generates a regressive tax. A dreadful product.
Same argument goes for speeding: If the cops really cracked down on speeding so that no one did it, the state would be out a lot of money.
Ban them outright. Then we can move on to banning the consumption of alcoholic beverages, Big Macs, Whoppers, chicken-fried steak, Twinkies, Marshmallow Fluff, Oreo cookies, and non-organic vegetables.
Stuff is deadly.
You’re right: Taxes are not popular. I don’t like paying them, and it infuriates me to see tax money wasted. And it is natural for people to want more service and to pay less for it.
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My point was political: Patrick has decided not to avoid the issue, and therefore needs to go on the offensive about the issues related to it. As I say, I fully expect it will cost him votes. But people are not blind to the quality of life around them: schools, roads, public transit, safety, the economy at large. If Patrick is going to win, they’ll need to be reminded of all that — and have faith that he will aggressively watchdog the money being spent.
Obviously it wasn’t a large sample and it’s more antecdotal than anything, but I remember the Globe article regarding undecided primary voters mentioning that those polled were split on the income tax issue and at least one of the people they quote saying they are more concerned about properly funding programs versus a cut in taxes. That gives me some hope that the electorate will be able to understand Patrick (and Gabs) nuanced stance on this issue, especially given that those undecideds claim not to have paid much attention to the race so far.
We won’t know until September 19 whether or not Deval’s position on taxes is a strategically sound approach to this three-way race, but it is both principled and good public policy. Charley’s comments cover the broad outlines of why, so I want to focus on what Reilly’s attack from the right tells us.
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His remarks are indeed a preview of what Kerry Healy will say. I think this cuts two ways. First, sure, as previous posters have noted, and as Reilly and Gabrieli advocates will surely repeat, Deveal had better respond well. “Cut taxes” is a popular enough slogan that anyone who has campaigned for well over a year by saying that we can’t roll back the income tax certainly needs effective ways of addressing the obvious criticisms and resistances. Second, however, I’d like to point out that Reilly’s way of framing Deval’s positions helps to intensify the kinds of sentiments and circulate the type of soundbite on which Republican politics have fed, both in gubernatorial elections here and in national campaigns. Take a proposal to use public policy to pressure companies to provide health care to workers and describe it as yet another instance of those wacky Democrats trying to pick pockets and ruin your economic future. Now that’s the way to build a majority for a Democratic party that stands for equity and the needs of working people.
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I am off to spend several days in windowless conference rooms with thousands of poorly dressed political scientists (excuse the redundancy), so, with apologies, I am unlikely to be in any position to respond to posts explaining how and why talking like Republicans is how Democrats can create a better, fairer, Commonwealth. I will put this on record, now, though: to all of you who say that this is the only way to take on Kerry Heally: if Deval gets by the primary, he’s going to beat her handily.
Here’s what to say:
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“When the income tax is cut you get back $200 while your millionaire neighbor gets back $2,000.
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Meanwhile, his property taxes go up by $500, as does yours, as does little old lady living across the street living on $30k a year in pensions.
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Who does the cut benefit?”
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A tax cut will always go more to the people who paid the most in the first place.
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So, never a tax cut?
Like the EITC, etc. That’s what libs favor. Don’t know how that figures into the MA discussion, since a progressive income tax is forbidden.