POST-GAZETTE - Res Publica

Taxed Enough Already

by David Trumbull - April 9, 2010

The Tea Party Express III Tour comes to Boston, to the Parkman Bandstand on the Common, Wednesday, April 14th. The featured speaker is former Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Tea Party-goers struggling to pay their mortgages, feed and clothe their families, and put a little money aside to put their kids through school and save for retirement know first-hand that out-of-control spending in Washington and on Beacon Hill is destroying the middle class and turning us into a nation of a few rich and many poor and dependent.

The Massachusetts Republican Party believes that excessive taxing and spending by state government adversely affects economic prosperity and that smaller, less intrusive government is the preferred path for the Commonwealth. That’s what the Party stated in the recently adopted Party Platform.

The GOP says that the tax code needs to be fair and equitable to all. Offering tax incentives to one group while excluding another typically engenders inter-group conflict, which is unhealthy for our nation and Commonwealth. Republicans reject this behavior. All taxpayers should be extended the ability to deduct any and all healthcare and medical drug costs on their MASS TAX FORM 1 - this benefit should not be limited solely to those groups currently favored by the tax code.

The Republican Party supports a rollback of the state sales tax to 5%, and supports a rollback of the state income tax to 5%. This would lower the income tax back to the level that existed prior to the Dukakis economic debacle. We recall that then-Governor Dukakis promised that the income tax increase would be temporary. Notwithstanding an initiative petition adopted by the citizens to return it to 5%, it remains above that percentage rate today.

The Mass GOP also supports constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate in order to increase Massachusetts taxes of any kind.

The Party Platform shows that the GOP gets it! The Republicans understand why ordinary citizens, many of whom had not previously attended political events, are showing up in huge numbers at the Tea Parties. For politicians, taxes are like a drug, and it’s time for an intervention. As writer P.J. O’Rourke put it

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.


[David Trumbull is the chairman of the Boston Ward Three Republican Committee. Boston's Ward Three includes the North End, West End, part of Beacon Hill, downtown, waterfront, Chinatown, and part of the South End.]

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