Healey’s First 100 Days Brings Bloated Budget
Who could have predicted tax revenues have fallen in Massachusetts?
Obviously, no one on Beacon Hill saw this coming with the way they have been spending. Three years ago, the bloated state budget was $40 billion, but then COVID hit which allowed the spendaholics to go even crazier.
The Commonwealth’s annual budget has now grown to $55 billion!
For Earth Day, Governor Mother Maura Healey spent $100 million on the Municipal Vulnerability Program to fund hiring “climate change experts” for 30 cities and towns and she promised “tons more money” for the program.
Her plan to fix the MBTA is to hire 1000 new workers and give them a $7500 signing bonus. Healey also spent $283 million on housing for the “newly arrived” a/k/a illegal immigrants. More welfare for undocumented Democrats!
All this within her first 100 days!
The plummeting tax collections were inevitable. Our economy is slowing. Inflation is skyrocketing. The housing market is in trouble. Banks are failing. And businesses are closing – hello, or should I say goodbye, Christmas Tree Shops. Did you ever figure that Christmas Tree Shops would be the next to go?
In Wellesley, the old Blockbuster building was taken over by First Republic Bank. Now First Republic is kaput. In every city and town there are similar stories. All over commercial districts, “For Lease” signs sometimes now outnumber the “Help Wanted” posters.
The writing has been on the wall for more than a year that our state’s tax revenue was going to slow down. And the revenues are not just in a slump. They are down 35 percent for last month.
Do you think that this will be a wake-up call for the State House to tighten their belts? Only when pigs fly!
Of course, the only thing that is on Beacon Hill’s chopping block is the tax-relief bill which has been promised for more than 14 months! Why should the illegal-alien criminals on the dole suffer when Democrats can stick it to the hard-working taxpayers?
As inevitable as the revenue decline is what comes next – a push for new taxes if collections continue to fall short. We always knew the so-called millionaires’ tax wouldn’t be just for “millionaires” forever. But the graduated income tax may be coming for you even before you can complete your plans to flee to Florida or New Hampshire.
In 12-step programs, there’s an old saying, “One drink is too many, a thousand are not enough.”
Citizens for Limited Taxation (CLT) took that adage and made it applicable to Massachusetts government:
“One tax is too many, a thousand are not enough.”
Truer now than ever.
