Gov. Patrick Continues Neoliberal Tack on Budget Cuts and Taxation

As the global recession deepens into depression, Gov. Deval Patrick can perhaps be forgiven for sticking to what he knows when faced with steeply declining state revenues - even while needed federal aid is now hanging on an upcoming Senate vote on Pres. Barack Obama's first stimulus package. But what Patrick and Obama and other neoliberal politicians of their generation know is how to shuffle the budgetary deck, "rob Peter to pay Paul," and do anything but what is necessary to pull the nation out of the growing financial crisis within the next few years - institute progressive taxation that steeply increases tax levels on corporations and the rich while vastly expanding direct aid to the vast majority of working and poor Americans.

In Patrick's case, the "remedy" he proposed at a Wednesday press conference amounts to little more than significant increases in regressive taxation - sales taxes and the like that are not felt by the well-off, but that create more financial distress for everyone else in the Commonwealth.

This to close a budget gap he is estimating at $3.5 billion for the next fiscal year. A gap that only exists because of the lack of progressive taxation in Massachusetts and in the United States.

Meanwhile, Patrick is seeking an expansion of his existing 9C powers that already allowed him to slash the budgets of every Executive Office under his direct control last October, and has proposed drastic cuts in most sectors of state government in his first proposed FY 2010 budget (House 1).

According to a policy brief by the Mass. Budget and Policy Center, his proposed $1.63 billion in spending cuts include:

• Cuts to child care access by $22.5 million (11 percent) from the FY 2009 GAA amount. These funds are used to provide low income children with child care. The proposed FY 2010 funding level would continue to support children already receiving subsidies, but would not provide funding to any new children.
• Cutting the budgets of all state higher education campuses (UMass, state colleges and community colleges) by $158 million (16.5 percent) from their FY 2009 GAA level. State higher education had already received a 5.5 percent cut in their FY 2009 funding through cuts. The Governor’s FY 2010 recommendation cuts higher education campuses by $105 million from their post 9C funding.
• $3.1 million, or 11.2 percent, in cuts to the Employment Services Program - relative to the FY 2009 GAA. The ESP provides job training and job search assistance to individuals who are receiving cash assistance grants under TAFDC.
• Cuts to the family services line item within the Department of Children and Families by $15.3 million, or 6.3 percent below the FY 2009 GAA. This item funds a range of services, including family support and stabilization services, which help prevent out-of-home placement in foster care, residential care or inpatient hospitals. It is also used to fund adoption subsidies, which help adoptive parents pay for medical expenses for children with special needs.
• Cuts to funding for state facilities for the developmentally disabled by 9.8 percent, relative to the FY 2009 GAA. Patrick expects that most of this $18.3 million cut will be achieved by closing Fernald Development Center in Waltham by the end of 2009. The Fernald Development Center currently houses about 160 residents.
• Cuts to Unrestricted General Government Aid by 28.5 percent for all cities and towns, a $375 million reduction from the FY 2009 GAA levels.

There are some bright spots - including increases to rental vouchers and subjecting telecommunications and utility poles and wires to local property taxes (forcing telecom and utility corporations to pay something like their fair share for use of this public infrastructure for the first time in recent memory) - but in the main the House 1 budget proposal is bad news for working Massachusetts.

Open Media Boston will continue to follow these important developments over the months to come, and encourages our viewers to get active in the movement for the kind of expansion of the public sphere that can save our communities from the depredations of corporate malfeasance - which is the primary cause of the economic disaster that threatens to engulf us all.

The types of strategies often proposed in these pages are at best social democratic stopgap measures, but without them, mainstream economists predict the coming depression could last a decade or more. And even with the expected recovery, it will only be a matter of a few years at most before the next crisis. It is the opinion of this publication that a socialist economy will ultimately be necessary to stop the endless cycle of boom and bust - where each bust gets progressively longer and deeper as the planet faces resource shortfalls and accelerating devastation from global warming. But that is an argument to develop over many editorials, and through much discussion and debate in these pages, in public events, and at the polls over a long period of time. Nevertheless, we mention this belief now to make it clear where we stand.

We will all need to think long and hard about where American politics and the American economic system need to go in the near future. But we can't take too long dithering about how to proceed. Soon enough we will have to use our democratic rights and act boldly for the good of the state and the nation. Failure to do so could easily mean the loss of our livelihoods, our liberty, and our planet. We prefer to eschew overstating our case in these kinds of discussions at Open Media Boston. But we fear that what sounds like grand rhetoric on our part is in fact merely the latest in a series of statements of the facts of our predicament.