Hecate: It’s the Revenue, Stupid

I give you Lew Finfer’s latest email to his Massachusetts Communities Action Network and Youth job activists from all over the state.

Good advice.

Follow it.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Dear Colleagues,

Here’s the case for why your busy organization should:

a) consider sending 1-5 people to the Statewide Action for New Revenue to prevent endless budget cuts being held Thursday May 5 from 10:00-2:00 in Gardiner Auditorium at the State House.

b) In any calls, letters, meetings with legislators about state budget programs you are supporting, you should also state that you can support tax increases if they fall mostly on those with more money since without them it’s hard to not cut programs or to restore any previous cuts.

 

In the 1992 Presidential Election, Clinton’s campaign manager, had a big poster in their campaign room, that read, “It’s the economy, stupid.” This meant that there’s lot of issue but if you can’t be clear and motivating on the economy and jobs you’d lose.

 

Well, as we go through season after season of fighting budget cuts and suffering from many of them, maybe we have to remember,

 

“It’s the revenue, stupid.”

 

I don’t use this saying in quotes in any way to be disrespectful to anyone. It is just to challenge myself and yourselves to put more time into this piece of organizing while we are working also against budget cuts and for budget restorations; because without new tax revenue, we can’t be successful in this.

 

Massachusetts has a $1.8 billion deficit this year which means there will be more budget cuts, level funding of programs, and very small increases for a very small number of programs. It’s either deal with that by this campaign for fair tax increases to raise revenue or endless years of budget cuts and deterioration of the fabric of our communities and support our families need.

 

We have this problem both because we gave out $3 billion in tax cuts to most corporations and to more well to do households between 1995-2002. So, when you gave up that with tax breaks and then have the deepest Recession ever further cutting back on your taxes paid by employees and businesses, you have a big chronic budget cuts.  Except for the $800 million sales tax increase in 2009, the only response in recent years has been more and more budget cuts.

 

In past years, we’ve organized for state budget programs by just saying, “you should fund this or increase the funding for this because it’s a good program”. When legislators face major budget deficits, it’s hard for them to prevent cuts unless we also can say, we support raising more revenue in these ways so you don’t have to make budget cuts and can restore some cuts that have been made.

 

Responding to a Republican- led push for a rollback on taxes in the House budget debate this week, Rep. Steven Kulik, as quoted in the State House News Service, said his constituents are not calling for tax cuts:

 

“I think it’s a little unusual that in the two weeks since the House Ways and Means Committee released the budget, the taxpayers I’ve been hearing from have not been calling or emailing me to say lower our income tax rate. They haven’t been calling to say cut revenue. They’ve been calling to say please increase spending on services that matter to me. Whether that’s on clothing allowance to poor children, local aid.”

 

We always hear that most legislators and the legislative leadership opposes any new taxes. They said that in 2009 and then ended up being willing to raise the sales tax which brought in $800 million without which we’d have had $800 million more in budget cuts. When we asked a legislator why they voted for this in 2009 when the legislative leadership said “no new taxes”, he said, I guess enough of us thought we’d cut too much already and couldn’t go through with cutting $800 million more.

 

Now it’s time to ramp it up!

 

On Thursday, May 5th, the Revenue Committee will hold a hearing on The Act to Invest in Our Communities and other important revenue legislation.  This proposal seeks new revenue by raising income, dividend, capital gains, interest taxes on those earning bigger incomes who could pay some more taxes so we have good schools, public safety, youth jobs, health care subsidies, social services, Local Aid, Higher Education funding, etc.

 

We are working with ONe Massachusetts and a statewide coalition of community groups and unions to support this bill, which would restore $1.3 billion of revenue to our budget. We’re asking our friends to come to the hearing, make your voice heard and visit your legislator’s office on May 5th.

 

Thursday, May 5th

 

10:00 – 2:00 p.m.

 

State House, Gardner Auditorium

 

 

Thanks for considering this.

 

Lew Finfer, Massachusetts Communities Action Network
Safe Teens/Safe Communities Coalition

 

crossposted at Hecate at the Public Policy Institute