Claiming a full-throated liberal mandate for the final years of his tenure, Governor Deval Patrick unveiled a $34.8 billion budget proposal Wednesday that reveals even more tax hikes than he proposed last week, increases spending across state government, and includes no significant cuts.
Patrick’s annual blueprint represents his most aggressive attempt yet to shift the tax burden to middle and upper-income earners and pour money into the types of programs that first stirred him to seek the corner office in 2006.
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Look at the picture. He really, really wants to drop his pinkie finger, ring finger index finger and thumb.
What the hell does this mean?
It means commrade that he wants to flip us all the bird, capeche?
I hate taxes as much as any right-wing Prepublican but , guys, how do you keep needed services without the money? If you can figure out a way to keep the government going without needed taxes, let me know.
How do they manage it in New Hampshire? And please don't reply with "the property taxes are much higher." The fact is the combined state and local tax burden is much lower there, and yet they manage to function.
First you have to ask yourself what is truly needed. Is upkeep and maintenence needed? Yes. Is a rail line from Springfield to Boston needed? No.
Are we at a tipping point? As wealth and power is shifted from the private sector to the public sector, the private sector is weakened and the public sector is strengthened. The more powerful public sector is, therefore, able to extract more, in the form of taxes, from a weaker private sector. As the public sector grows, more people benefit from government services and these beneficiaries are more likely to support additional tax increases and the politicians who support them. And so it goes. What we're witnessing, both in Massachusetts and nationwide, is a fundamental shift from a free enterprise system to European-style socialism.
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Yes we probably need more revenue for the right things after waste is trimmed.then let's not let them squander the new revenue on pensions and health insurance for themselves. Raise the sales tax on everything , including groceries , and lower the income tax to 2/3percent
The tax increase is a direct result of Romneycare. As many of us predicted, the rising cost of health care born by the state is now causing the state income tax to rise.
The income tax hike from 5.25% to 6.25% is not a 1 percent increase but a 19% increase. Just saying. Raising the tax on cigarettes by $1.00 a pack. Man, oh, man I'm glad I'm not addicted to those cancer sticks.
I would like to see the roads filled with pot holes fixed but just not woth the same shoddy inspection that allowed the roads to be paved with material that didn't meet specifications. This is why the highways are a mess.
Will there ever be any cuts to budgets for outdated programsor services?
please do not confuse liberal with math, statistics or facts. Thanks.
Here's one BIG problem with Deval's proposed tax increase and the Globe's reporting of it. As reported by a REAL newspaper, the WSJ in today's editorial, "The state's REAL spending driver is the EXPLODING cost of RomneyCare. Last August Beacon Hill was forced to impose new price controls and a cap on overall state health spending because "health care has crowded out key public investments", as Mr. Patrick puts it in his budget. health care has risen to 41% of the MA budget for 2013. ...In addition, the State Constitution says that the MA income tax is a flat tax on EVERYBODY. It cannot be made "progressive" by changing the personal exemption...The new taxes will NOT go to transportation, and education. .And the MA health care law for all is becoming an expensive FAILURE. So yet one more big LIE by Deval Patrick and a big LIE by the Boston Globe.
Spend, spend, spend. How much of the increrase will go for rediculous pensions or state workers, lifetime health care costs for teachers and others, nonsense salaries for some state employees, etc.?
The "middle class" and others deserve more specific details.
"vast majority of programs, however, would receive increases in spending,"
Yea, they all have performed so well lets keep increasing it.
Zero-dollar budgeting