Romney's Budget Doesn't Cut It

How do you balance a deficit-ridden budget in the midst of an economic downturn without raising taxes or decimating state services? You can’t, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will soon pay the price for trying.

When Massachusetts Governor W. Mitt Romney announced last month that he was restructuring the state budget for Fiscal Year 2004, he claimed that the plan would save the state $2.17 billion without doing much harm. “The budget is balanced. It doesn’t raise taxes; it preserves our commitment to care for those who can’t care for themselves,” Romney said at the time. A month later, a series of crushing cuts in state aid to municipalities and human services reveal the flimsiness of Romney’s third claim.

Under the 2004 budget, Massachusetts towns will lose a total of $52 million in state aid. Although Romney said he would not cut a single city’s budget by more than 10.5 percent, many municipalities have complained that the cuts are even more severe. Decreases in this state aid to municipalities are expected to strike school districts especially hard, and yet Romney has separately proposed cutting the state’s funding of special education.

Romney also proposed to save $60 million by restructuring health and human services in Massachusetts. His plan has met opposition from advocates for the poor, elderly and ill, who say that that Romney’s savings will come at the expense of services including Medicaid and nursing care. Their arguments are convincing, as Romney has already announced that he will close 36 “underutilized” health and human services offices, which will inherently reduce access to these services.

The nation’s current economic woes mean that many states are grappling with budget crises. But Romney’s proposed means of generating revenue in Massachusetts—including fee and toll increases and tuition hikes at state colleges and universities—act as a form of regressive taxation. Because every individual faces the same cost, the poor will lose a larger percentage of the incomes to state fees—while they simultaneously suffer the most under Romney’s budget cuts.

With his promise not to raise taxes, Romney has ruled out a more equitable way of generating revenue: increasing the progressive income tax by reversing Massachusetts’ tax rollbacks of the mid-’90s. But like his promise to save the state more than $2 billion, Romney’s refusal to raise taxes may be especially harmful to the state. That Romney is sacrificing the welfare of the people of Massachusetts for the sake of his campaign promises is a true sign of poor leadership.