June
10, 2003 OP ED COLUMN
MAINE
WOULD BE HURT BY PROPOSED TAX BREAKS
By Edward Gorham
President
Maine AFL-CIO
Just
before taking a two-week vacation in April, Congress approved a budget that
makes the situation in Maine worse, not better, even as they set aside billions
for tax cuts that have no impact but to benefit the wealthy.
Urgent Needs in Maine
Unmet
Here
in Maine the last two years have been tough enough for working families without
the federal government making things worse.
In Maine, 132,000 individuals have no health care, including 16,000
children. More than one-tenth of
Maine children live in poverty. We
have urgent needs in our state that are expensive to fix while we struggle with
a $518 million deficit. How can we
fix the 19 percent of our roads that are in poor to mediocre condition, and 78
percent of our schools that need repairs to be in good condition?
Tax
Cuts for the Wealthy
At
the national level we have urgent problems that we have to fix now.
Our children are trying to learn in schools that leak in the rain.
Seventy-five million people went without health care at some point in the
last two years. The nation has lost
an average of 100,000 jobs every month since President Bush came into office,
yet Republican leaders in Congress and President Bush still insist that we must
cut programs that could improve our lives to pay for tax cuts that benefit the
wealthy.
Earlier
this month the Maine AFL-CIO and Fair Taxes for All released a report by the
Economic Policy Institute and the Institute for America’s Future that detailed
how crucial programs in Maine would fare in this budget full of tax breaks.
We found that Maine will lose $17 million over the next decade for
education and job training. $15
million for health care. $12
million for police and security. That’s
an 8 percent cut in what Maine will receive from the federal government to keep
up with new homeland security needs.
Political
Cover for Bush
The
president’s argument that tax cuts will create jobs is just political cover,
and has been widely rejected by experts and economic institutions.
Since President Bush first suggested a second round of tax cuts, Federal
Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the non-partisan Congressional Budget
Our states are in the worst
fiscal crisis since World War II and Congress is facing record deficits.
Yet our elected leaders’ economic policy is to cut programs that
improve our lives while assuring that millionaires get tax breaks.
Either they don’t get what’s going on in peoples’ lives or they
don’t care.
Blueprint
for U.S. Bankruptcy
With
the weak economy, the health care crisis and our commitment to shore up Social
Security and Medicare, the Bush budget and tax cut plan is a blueprint for
bankruptcy.
The
tax cut proposal is going to be finalized in May. Senators Collins and Snowe can
do the right thing for Maine by rejecting the tax cuts and demanding that the
money be used to rebuild our economy in a way that benefits all of us, not just
the wealthy.
In
America it’s not supposed to be all pain for the working people and all gain
for the millionaires.
*************************************************************