Now I haven’t seen the legislation, and I’m sure there are a few bugs that need to be removed, but this, is a good idea, and will be a very difficult fight to win. Are you ready?
Baker’s proposed state budget, to be released Wednesday, will call for doubling the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, which currently adds as much as $937 to the tax returns of low-income working families with three or more children. Within three years, that figure would increase to $1,873.
To pay for it, Baker calls for phasing out the state’s film tax credit.
“I think it’s an important opportunity for us to both do something real and also send a signal that we believe in supporting people who are working real hard to get ahead,” the governor said in an interview Monday. “This is one way, in addition to increasing the minimum wage and some others, to provide them with more bang for their buck.”
Having a Republican Governor push a policy to the left of House Leadershipship? That’s pretty awkward, and puts Democrats in a tough bind messaging wise.
Tweet from @jamieEdridge . @MassGovernor proposal to expand #EITC through repeal of corporate tax break is the kind of clear framing we need to see done by #maleg
Eldridge is neither in leadership, nor is he in the House.
This will be another interesting opportunity to separate the truly progressive Democrats from those who are progressive only when leadership lets them be.
I know how they can fix that.
The most important question, to me, is “What comes next?”
I recommended this diary because the film tax credit is an embarrassment, and because sometimes half a loaf is better than none. At least Governor Baker is killing the film tax credit. In normal times, I would similarly applaud expanding the Earned Income Tax credit. These are not normal times.
Perhaps a way to understand this is that raising taxes on the wealthy to fund the Earned Income Tax credit is even more difficult, politically, than raising taxes on the wealthy to restore the MBTA to a sound financial footing.
If things stop here, we will once again delude ourselves and others by thinking the expansion of the EIC has helped people. Here’s why it’s a delusion.
An ENORMOUS number of EIC recipients depend on the MBTA to get to and from their jobs. With no increases in MBTA funding, we will see some combination of enormous fare increases and drastic reductions in services. We saw the latter this winter, and the burden was disproportionally felt by EIC recipients. The former will surely come as spring follows winter so long as the state refuses to fix the debt service problem of the MBTA.
All we’re doing, by increasing EIC and not increasing the MBTA, is:
1. Laundering the film tax money through the poor. We’ll be using EIC recipients as pawns in a cynical shell-game that uses the film tax credit to perpetuate the current mess and thus minimizes the culpability of both Mr. DeLeo and Mr. Baker in creating and sustaining the disaster.
2. Perpetuating the regressive burden of our current MBTA funding. EIC recipients have no choice except to use the MBTA.
3. Squandering $100M that could help fix the MBTA by instead perpetuating its most severe failures
I therefore hope that things do NOT stop here, and that between Mr. Baker and Mr. DeLeo, our elected leaders find the courage and integrity to raise taxes on our wealthiest citizens so that all of us can one day again have a safe, convenient, and affordable public transportation system.
nt
Perhaps it is.
It certainly helps drive the anti-MBTA wedge deeper into the state. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that both Mr. DeLeo and Mr. Baker want to kill broad based political support for the MBTA.
As I’ve observed earlier, it seems that our leaders far prefer pitting the poor against each other (in this case, MBTA users versus non-MBTA users) rather than taxing the very wealthy.
Not enough over the long term, but it’s something.
I also seem to recall that the current budget CUT state funding for the MBTA.
The various budget documents (at least the ones I can find) very effectively obfuscate straightforward questions such as “What are the state payments to the MBTA”.
I’d like see Governor Baker’s proposal in the context of MBTA funding approved by the legislature for, say, the last three years.
I’m also curious about what amount the legislature actually approves. Governor Patrick made at least one proposal to increase MBTA funding that was dead on arrival at Mr. DeLeo’s office.
Does that mean that Baker’s proposal to cut money from the T is off the table, or are we talking about two different budget cycles?
He is getting out front of the legislature with the new budget, so it’s out earlier than normal.
The $14 million (MBTA part of $40 million transportation) current year cut was said to be a result of a hiring freeze.
The Gov’s budget is not out earlier than usual. It is required to be filed by the end of January except when there is a new administration, which is granted an additional month, so this budget is on time, nothing better.
But keep on me. I realize you don’t have much else to keep you occupied.
How’s the bowling going?
I don’t understand how you can think that expanding the EIC will not help people. You seem to be implying that the EIC expansion is being funded by removing money from the T, but you never justify that assumption. And even if it were true, I think people who receive the EIC will benefit more from this then they would by having this money go to the T. Once the EIC is expanded, it is likely to stay at the higher level. The T’s budget problems are mostly a one-time problem, not an ongoing problem – the T needs its debt paid off and money for infrastructure upgrades, but its actual operational budget is mostly ok. So we don’t really need a permanent change to the T’s funding, while a permanent change to the EIC will be useful forever.
I also suspect that a large percentage of EIC recipients do not use the T. Rural incomes are lower than city incomes, and people who are unemployed for 6-9 months are likely to claim the EIC for a year while still owning a car.
Even if you assume that this money could instead be given to the T and it would directly go to reducing fares, it is still more useful to put it towards the EIC. The EIC goes to about 400,000 people, while there are probably about 2 million people who ride the T regularly. So $100M/year provides about $250 per family through the EIC or about $50 per person through fare reductions. This is the result of means-testing the benefit, so that it only goes to the people who need it. An even better policy (based on what your arguments imply your goals are) is to increase the EIC and then raise fares by $250/year ($21/month), which would generate $500M for the T without affecting the average person who receives the EIC.
I predict that if raising taxes to fund the MBTA ever comes up, Mr. Baker and Mr. Deleo will each cite this move as evidence for all the marvelous things they’re doing for the working poor.
They will then redouble their “no new taxes” mantra, saying “we’ve done enough”.
Do you actually think that if this passes it will change how Baker and Deleo feel about funding the T? They have both made it clear that funding the T is not a priority and not something they are interested in. If they increase funding, it will be in response to angry constituents forcing them to do it. People who care about the T working aren’t going to stop caring just because the EIC was increased. I don’t think that most people think of the T as a benefit for the working poor, so if they tried to argue that raising the EIC takes care of the same problems as funding the T, they will just look clueless and confused.
The MBTA is already expensive and has already raised fares. Yet another fare hike almost exclusively targets what used to be the middle class.
It leaves the top 1% untouched, while gouging everybody else even more.
I don’t actually support that proposal either. My point is that if you want to maximize funding for the T without making the working poor pay for it, then increasing the average EIC and fares by the same amount will be more effective than having the state directly fund the T. An even better plan would be to raise fares and then provide a refundable tax credit that fully covers the cost of monthly T passes but phases out based on your income. Set it so that someone making about $60k/year would pay the same amount as they do now. This is a backdoor tax increase on the wealthy, but only paid by people who ride the T. And it’s just the kind of increased fees that Republicans love to use instead of tax increases.
As a side benefit, it dumps more of the T’s cost onto tourists and people who work here but live out of state to avoid MA taxes.
Currently, every dollar I pay in tolls on the Pike and on bridges counts toward by state income tax deduction. Doesn’t matter if I drive it twice a day five days a week or once in a while. (fn 1)
However, this is not true for the MBTA. For the T, only monthly and weekly passes are deductible. If one commutes by T three times a week to and from work, it’s cheaper to not get the monthly pass — but doing so foregoes the tax deduction.
My point is this: the current tax policy already favors those who pay tolls on the Pike over those who pay for mass transit. You’re suggesting to exacerabate that phenomenon.
fn 1 the total in the year has to meet a threshold, for both auto and transit
Not every year, but frequently, and like some other proposition involving the number two and a half, the individual fares may or may not go up by exactly 2.5%, but the aggregate will.
I think the MBTA got the tone on it exactly right. 2.5% increase per year is fair for fare. It’s also in line with the legislature’s thinking on the gas tax circa 2014.
right now but with some misgivings for the longer term implications. But I don’t agree with the statement that the T has a “one-time problem.”
The T, since its state funding was slashed in 2000, has had a structural deficit. That’s why it’s taken on the additional debt in the first place. It’s why it’s raised fares, cut some services, and still can’t do basic maintenance. It’s operational budget is not “basically OK.” It provides shoddy, unreliable service and requires regular infusions from the General Fund just to do that. And everyone on Beacon Hill knows it, despite what they crow in front of the cameras.
The T has both “one time” problems and a structural problem.
One one time problem is this past winter. The storms cost the T about $36M and winter isn’t over yet.
From the link cited by stomv (emphasis mine):
As stomv correctly observes, the T has both structural and “one-time” problems. It’s operational budget is and will continue to be a disaster because there is no funding for the maintenance and new equipment needed to keep operating costs in line.
Finally, it seems to me that the most important number in this discussion is an estimate of the total cost to residents and businesses of the collapse of the MBTA. I specifically mean lost wages, lost revenue, lost time (because of enormous traffic jams), missed meetings, and so on.
The references to record-setting total snow accumulation in the various official statements about this winter are a bit misleading. The initial blizzard, at the end of January, was not “historic”. The MBTA was completely unable to handle it, and the rest of the collapse followed as night follows day. Anybody who has had to keep a driveway clear in Massachusetts has learned that if the driveway isn’t cleared to black pavement after the first snow, it is very likely to be lost for the season. Once a rutted layer of snow and ice has frozen in place, subsequent storms are MUCH harder to clear.
Our collective inaction causes the costs to skyrocket. As the ad from 1972 reminded us, we can pay now or we can pay later.
My main point was that it’s not only a one-time problem. The snow got the broken MBTA on the front pages, but the T’s troubles go, ahem, deeper than the snow.
An interesting political angle in the Gov’s proposal is that among the biggest supports of the film tax credit is Teamsters Local 25. See this bio of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien on the importance of the tax credit to his organization — and also the role of Speaker DeLeo in making it happen.
Gov looking pretty deft.
With any luck, Mr. Baker and Mr. DeLeo can stuff the teamsters, drive the MBTA into receivership, and use that as a pretext to stuff the MBTA unions.
I expect such behavior from a GOP governor. I abhor Mr. DeLeo’s complicity in the whole thing.
Other unions oppose the Film Tax Credit as sucking public money away from workers into the film industry.
I’ve been preaching end this for years – and his target for the funds isn’t the worst one. I hope this signals our legislature is on board.
But it’s winnable.
Indeed, a tough fight pitting the awful conservatives and woefully naive progressives against a courageous proposal from a new governor.
Trouble is, it does NOTHING about the most pressing financial problem facing the state, and spends down one of the few available funding sources to address that problem to boot.
We need to fix public transportation. We need to tax the wealthy in order to do so. That should be our ONLY priority. This is a distraction.
but it’s a good idea, and it will help real people.
I’m certainly not opposed to this.
I am simply weary and frustrated by the abject refusal of our government to address the most immediate, most urgent, most challenging issue on the table.
I am, frankly, near tears as I watch my own party destroy my home. And that is what this steadfast and obstinate inaction is doing.
as you don’t just swap one thing out for another directly in a budget. Call my a cynic but this story reads like it was vetted through Frank Lutz or a Downtown Scotty Brown headline. as things are trickling out Baker wants to cut 4500 state jobs too, he’s proposing a corporate tax amnesty which he is touting as generating revenue, he’s also going to cut 11 million in mental health, kindergarten expansion grants. He’s also going to “re-determine” eligibility for Mass Health. Don’t think he’s going to add families here.
So I ask you, what makes a better headline? Film tax credit.
I want to see exactly what’s going on here, but I’m agreeing with Somervilletom, this is looking like a glittery distraction before we get nailed. Hope I’m wrong.
is the enemy of the good.
Can’t agree with you on this, Tom. Lets win this battle, which really would make things better, and then on to the next.
It’s a small step in a better direction. I agree with you in general, but we simply cannot stand still waiting for politicians to come up with what we progressives think is wonderful. I’ve said a few times that Baker’s in a pretty good spot to do good, and maybe this is a sign that he will take some of these opportunities. Even incremental progress is progress.
It seems that your problem is with the flat rate which was placed in the state Constitution by a prior generation of progressive goo-goos so it would be nigh impossible to change.
But increasing the EIC (and why not the personal exemption while we’re at it) does create a de facto more progressive rate.
You, sir, are obsessed with the symbolism of taxing the ‘rich’ to the point where you complain about an actual result that doesn’t have shiny enough optics.
How many wealthy people will pay more in taxes as a result of this?
ZERO. NADA.
Your opposition to providing sustainable funding for the MBTA is frequent and clear here. You make the same self-centered “what’s in it for me” argument that the rest of your party makes for virtually every issue, nationally and locally.
I don’t doubt that you like this proposal. Whether shiny or not, it advances your frequently-stated agenda of killing the MBTA by starving it to death.
Not zero. Wealthy actors, producers, and film-types will pay more taxes, yes?
I’m under the impression that most of these credits go to out-of-state companies who use them to offset other costs. So I think this will look like lost revenue to the current recipients.
I doubt that any of that flows through to increased taxes for shareholders of the affected companies, at least if their tax advisers are any good.
are insurance companies, financial institutions and other corporations that owe state taxes. Of the $327 million in film tax credits that have been generated since 2006, organizations like these have purchased $280 million, or 86 percent. They have paid an average of 89 cents for a dollar’s worth of tax credit and thereby reduced the state taxes they would otherwise have had to pay by $30 million. More info on this boondoggle here.
I would be interested to know what people on here think of when they say we should tax the wealthy. If you are really wealthy you probably have a couple of homes, and will claim your primary household is whatever state is going to tax you the least. If you have a house in Mass and one in Fla, you’ll switch over to being a Fla resident if the state income tax goes too high. Then Mass gets nothing. (I personally know this happens).
So what is it, income of $100,000 is wealthy? Net worth of $500,000? If you have $250,000 in the bank and live in Charlton you’re doing pretty good, lower cost of living out here in the sticks. Cambridge not so much. Since baby boomer retirees are a growing segment of the population do you think you’ll keep them as Mass residents if you overtax them?
Instead of primary residence, make it any residence thus mooting the idea of choosing which house is primary. We could say any money made here is taxed here. We cannot be afraid that we’ll lose a race to the bottom.
The houses are taxed now, but the tax is paid to the municipality rather than the state.
Income tax can only be charged where a person lives, i.e., residence. So are you looking to also tax out-of-state building owners based on their income? You want income tax returns submitted along with property tax bills, and say we will charge YOU more, but not you?
BTW – do you have any IDEA how much property is placed into trusts (with a life estate for use, of course) in order to avoid such taxation schemes and artificially impoverish yourself to qualify for Medicaid and free nursing home care?
Income is taxed where it’s earned, not where the earner lives. NH residents who work in MA pay MA income tax. If NH started assessing income tax, the MA tax would be reduced by the amount NH took. If the purported FL residents earned their income in MA, they would gain nothing by changing their residence, because MA would tax their income at the difference between the MA and FL rates.
and if you work in RI and live in MA, you pay MA taxes but are credited the amount you paid to RI.
nt
nt
I worked in Mass for a multinational corp. If I pull my pension and call myself a Fla resident, I won’t pay Mass taxes.
to this issue. Earned income vs. unearned income, etc. The Fidelity Johnsons have moved their money to NH for example:
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/newsstatenewengland/914636-227/fidelity-head-moves-familys-finance-firm-from.html
I’m trying to close every possible loophole. Maybe it should be based on property values, but it does seem if you or your property is worth over a certain amount, the state should impose an additional tax above the municipal property tax regardless of what percentage of the year the house is lived in or whether you consider it a primary residence. As for your third paragraph we should tax the trusts too. There should be no such thing as tax shelters like you describe, and of course if we had a single-payer health system the motives you mention would be moot anyway.
First, “wealth” is very different from “income”. “Wealth” is your net worth (more or less). “Income” is an arbitrary construct created primarily to allow taxation of wage earners. For the truly wealthy (those with non-household wealth in excess of, say, $100 M), “income” is a completely arbitrary number chosen by financial planners as part of an overall wealth management strategy.
Nobody who is dependent on wages is “wealthy”. Period.
One immediate concept is “non-household wealth”. That refers to assets that do NOT include the principle residence.
The precise threshold for defining the top 1% by wealth is derived by examining the wealth distribution in MA or in the US. This number is exceedingly difficult to find, as current tax and accounting policy carefully obscures it. One good reason for that obfuscation is that, by construction, the top 1% is a small enough number of people that individual identities can be readily extracted from data that the government might publish.
I will say that the numbers you’re tossing about — $100,000 in income, $500,000 in net worth, $250,000 in a bank balance — are at least an order of magnitude smaller than we’re talking about.
The specific proposals to “tax the wealthy” exclude all the numbers you offer. For example, the proposed increase in the state capital gains tax also includes a corresponding increase in the threshold above which the increased tax would kick in. A family with a net worth of $500,000 would not come close to reaching that threshold. It is relatively hard to sustain an annual capital gain of much more than 10-20% of a portfolio. A $1 M threshold therefore corresponds to a portfolio valued at $10-20 M.
NOBODY is proposing to “overtax” “baby boomer retirees”. If a retiree with a net worth of, say, $250 M is so selfish that they will leave the state rather than pay their fair share of taxes, then I think all of us would be better off if they move to some state (like Florida, Mississippi, or whatever) that offers lower capital gains tax and a correspondingly primitive level of state services and benefits.
If they have that much money they will “move” their money and they really have no need for any state services and benefits. And guess what they will still live in Mass on the Vineyard with their Caymen Island registered yacht parked in Edgartown harbor.
I don’t care where they register their yacht. If it’s docked in Edgartown they should pay excise taxes here.
I’m attempting to respond with facts, and you seem to be answering with slogans.
The point is, first, that nobody is proposing to overtax baby boomer retirees. That’s a talk-show radio canard.
Next is whether you agree that the wealthy SHOULD pay increased taxes on their wealth. I suspect that if state legislators pursued wealthy MA residents who evade their taxes with the same energy that they pursue “welfare cheats” who “abuse” the already meager welfare benefits, then we’d get more tax revenue. The fact that some might be successful at evading their tax obligations does not weaken the argument that those obligations should exist.
If you wish to discuss tax policy, let’s do so. If you wish a forum to repeat Howie Carrisms, I’m not interested.
My initial question was what is considered wealthy? I agree everyone should pay some taxes, but specifics should be defined. If people just say tax the wealthy, we will have tax policy which will enact laws as poorly thought out and poorly written as the recent “software tax”. Our politicians imo have a very poor track record of doing anything which will create a long term healthy business atmosphere, which in turn will encourage investment and good jobs. They’d rather OK casinos and enhance the lottery, which punishes the poor.
Here’s one specific. No pensions for politicians who retire and have a net worth of over 2 million dollars.
I’ve given you specifics that you have not responded to. I’ve attempted to clarify the distinction between “wealth” and “income”. You’ve not responded.
A fine starting point is Governor Patrick’s 2012 proposal.
If the following were proposed, would you support it (different from the 2012 Patrick proposal):
– Immediately doubling the personal income tax rate to 10%, and simultaneously raising the personal exemptions so that incomes for single tax filers making $250,000/year or less or families making $500,000/year or less are not effected (and, in fact, pay no state income tax)
– Immediately doubling the state capital gains tax rate to 24%, and simultaneously increasing the personal exemptions so that capital gains less than $250,00/500,000/year are not taxed.
When I say “tax the wealthy”, this is what I mean. Of course the specifics need to be adjusted. For example, I don’t know how personal exemptions are applied to capital gains income (I haven’t done my own tax filings for years).
I offer these as a discussion starter.
I’d support both.
it would never pass muster with the courts:
The offending Article 44 of the constitution authorizes “reasonable” exemptions, but the courts have put the kibosh on legislation that appears to be an end run around the flat tax requirements.
Governor Patrick proposed essentially the same thing (very different numbers, of course) in his FY14 House 1 Budget Recommendation. From that document:
While I’ve changed the numbers, the basic premise is the same — raise the rate and simultaneously raise the personal exemptions.
to do just that. Some deviation from a pure “flat” tax rate. Almost certainly Governor Patrick’s proposal would have been deemed constitutional. Your proposal effectively eliminates the income tax for everyone making under $250,000/$500,000 and raises it to 10% for income over that.
That’s not an exemption the effect of which is a tapering upward of the effective tax rate. It’s an exemption that quite clearly creates two brackets: 0% and 10%. Based on prior cases, the SJC wouldn’t let it through. Of course, it would have an equally hard time passing the legislature anyway.
My intent is to be specific about what I mean when I say “tax the wealthy”.
It sounds like there is a combination of rate hike and exemption increase that yields more revenue than Mr. Patrick’s earlier proposal and still passes constitutional muster. A similar middle ground surely exists for capital gains increases.
I know that any increase will have difficulty passing today’s legislature. My hope is that a great many unenrolled voters will support this measure if we are clear about who pays more and who receives more.
The movement that culminated in proposition 2 1/2 didn’t start overnight. Perhaps a similar movement to truly tax the wealthy will bear fruit if we who see the opportunity articulate it clearly and loudly enough.
Tom I know public transport is your primary concern and that is fine but it’s not everyone’s first priority. In my town I have come to expect little from government and haven’t been disappointed. Some of the things people come to expect aren’t provided out here and i would want some of those addressed “if everyone else is getting theirs”. I don’t think it was you but previously some said we should provide free public transportation.
I live on a dirt road, would like it paved. There is no water department, I have a well. No sewer dept, no trash pickup, if I call 911 chances are it’s volunteer fireman who show up. I know we’re in a commonwealth but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.
…but where in the world in MA do you live that sounds like a third world country?
We’re off the grid somewhat. I have lived for up to a week without electricity when we had an ice storm a couple years ago. Heated with the wood stove. Cooked on the grill. It’s 25 min roundtrip to the nearest store, so don’t forget the milk on the way home. You just learn to plan.
Not a lot of people, because these are (relatively) small towns.
The things that Scott describes, though, I’m going to say are part of rural life. Dirt roads, wells, town dumps, volunteer fire departments.
I do think these communities are generally under-served in other ways that ought not to be acceptable in this state. Things like economic development and access to health care, for instance.
I thought we had already agreed that the tax increases I propose would not affect you.
If we increased taxes on the wealthy (along the lines of what I and others have advocated elsewhere), then you would not pay any more and yet would still benefit (indirectly, if not directly) from the resulting increase in overall prosperity.
The thing to realize is that by keeping folks like you divided from folks like me, the 1% is able to continue plundering both of us. The government goods and services you mention (water, sewer, trash, emergency, not to mention schools and aid to the poor) are all kept on a very short leash along with public transportation so that the 1% can continue to enlarge their already enormous often off-shore and tax-free portfolios.
There is more than enough wealth in this commonwealth to lift ALL the boats. We in the 99% are beached because so much of that wealth has been moved to the private, gated, heavily secured pond of the 1%.
I did agree it won’t affect my taxes. Just wanted to point out when you get this new revenue you will have to spread it around a little more than you may have anticipated.
The EIC means that anyone who works gets the same $1k tax credit. Since the rate is flat, that means everybody gets the same $50, right? If everybody pays $50 less in taxes, then the tax code is a smidge more progressive for those who earned enough to capture the full EIC. It doesn’t do much (anything?) for the not-working poor, but it does help the working poor in a tangible way.
Personally, I wish he just put that money toward mass transit full stop, both for MBTA and other agencies, roughly proportionally. I’m betting that the non-MBTA agencies in MA also had tough winters; I’m sure they could all use the shot in the arm.
(numbers approximate)
I wrote as if every filer gets the EIC. Wrongo.
The EIC is “a refundable earned income credit is available to certain low-income individuals who have earned income and meet certain federal requirements for the federal earned income credit.”
Loosely speaking, poor people will pay less in taxes and moderate and wealthy folks will pay the same. That makes it even more progressive than I claimed in the post I wrote above, although it maintains the caveat that it does nothing for the non-working poor.
I have a prediction for how this is all going to actually go down.
The Governor has this great idea to redistribute bad money into an area that does good, even if where he says he wants to spend it isn’t exactly the current highest priority (although, it’s still a good priority).
He can do that in great part because he doesn’t actually have to make any of the decisions, and by proposing to swap one tax credit for another he won’t be a ‘tax raiser,’ so on a technicality the Grover Noquistrians can’t go after him.
The legislature figures out that bad money just became much harder to keep spending, because the right-wing governor just came out for something more progressive than where the leg is at. That makes them look bad.
Cue come to Jesus moment.
The legislature decides to nix the lousy tax credits, but unlike the governor, actually has to make decisions, and doesn’t want to give the new governor a complete win… so puts a bulk of the money toward the T.
Governor Baker, meanwhile, probably realizes at this very moment that this is about how all this will go down, and is currently working on growing a mustache so he can twirl it in his second state house office.
The T will get a new chunk of state funding, a dumb loophole will be cut and like most things on Beacon Hill, it will pass with a margin that makes the Governor’s signature superfluous, so no need to worry about any kooky Norquistrians.
If it plays out like that, I’ll join you in celebrating.
You’ll buy rye a beer for
(a) championing the idea for years, and
(b) because you’ve been such a sourpuss on this thread.
You’ll also buy me a beer because, hey man! Long time no see!
Sounds like a plan. 🙂
As a poor person, I say I filed my taxes myself this year without affording to pay for commercial preparation. Of course, tax preparation fees are money exempt from taxation. I did not dig anyway in my wallet to hand a Benjamin for the H and R Block a walk from my home. Pocketing Earned Income Credit is not happening for me this year. Many of my Walmart co-workers will also not get refunds via EIC, especially us who lack qualifying, dependent children. Poverty situates a worker so that she is hard put to attract a spouse, or even actually keeps her from believing in any her co-workers’ ability to provide in conjugally building a home (which costs more than the <$2000 sprinkle our MA RGA Guv is throwing in next year).
Any Republican Governors Association-supported man will be timid not bold, whether it's Walker, Brewer, Scott or whatever White Anglo-Saxon Protestant name. I am not impressed with the RGA cell of BakerPolitoRossLeombrunoRizoli. Poor retail workers like me need A real Fighting Chance. The MA RGA Guv should not fool the American working class with his molasses. A tax refund of $1300.00 direct deposited into the bank account of one of us earning wages below $65K is not an authentic solution but a molasses ploy to push our electors Alam, Lake and company to mark their college votes Republican for 2016.
American rappers are more sincere than our MA RGA Guv about how much cash flow poor minorities like me need.
Poor minorities like me don't need his lousy proposal, which will not give us money to buy new Ford trucks nor 'vettes. We need guidance (which elected Democrats already give) in reading educational texts which Net Neutrality and broadband make possible. Our Internet already shares educational videos which could inspires viewers to enroll, such as by enlisting in our US military to get Montgomery GI benefits.
Massachusetts Public Libraries give public Internet access to the homeless and under-employed. Poor net surfers need personal librarian guidance as to how they can keep pushing their learning potential for job placement.
Math used to be so easy with Euclid, but math applied since the previous century proves elusive, but 90% of Bay Staters can understand and numerically solve problems for Sir Isaac Newton's model of gravity, where us 99.5% of us are hard to put to derive the Absolute Differential Calculus and Tensors discovered by our fellow American Einstein a hundred years ago. Obviously, Massachusetts needs one hundred billion dollars to beat Japan to run a magnetic levitation train system for workday and recreation use, and our timid RGA MA Governor falls below such order of magnitude to even negotiate for a World Bank loan for some of the money,
not going after a $12 or $15 dollar minimum wage ballot question. It would have won — and many, many lives would have been dramatically improved. /sigh
We have a veto proof majority in the legislature, and the Governor’s budget is basically a recommendation.
I doff my hat to Baker for the budget’s rhetoric. We’ll see what it actually means when the legislature comes out with theirs respectively.
of whom you speak? The budget will be whatever DeLeo agrees to. I don’t expect to feel like the broader party’s values, or even the values of most Democratic state reps, were honored by it.
The senate is more liberal and looking to cut some of the House’s power when it comes to joint committees. With Baker, the power dynamic has shifted. Things, I think, will be a lot different from the days when the legislature just rolled over Patrick’s budget without ever taking it seriously.
Let me see if I properly understand you:
I think you’re saying that today’s House will take Governor Baker’s budget proposal more seriously than it took any of Governor Patrick’s proposals.
Sadly, I think you are exactly correct.
For this MBTA funding (which is still $15 million less than projected in the 2013 plan, because Baker is using as his baseline the post – February 2015 cuts figure). My concern is about the budget as a whole, and about next year’s budget, when Baker may have a harder time coming up with half a billion in one-off revenue. What kind of cuts will we see then and how seriously will Mr. Speaker take them?