Senate
Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) released the following statement
today, following Governor Patrick’s announcement of $225 million in proposed 9C
cuts to help close an estimated $540 million budget deficit for Fiscal Year
2013:
“Governor Patrick is confronting
the harsh reality of a faltering economic recovery and budgetary paralysis in
Washington to meet the requirements of a balanced budget.
Yet it’s also a harsh reality that this
situation could and should have been addressed by more aggressive action to
create a better climate for economic growth.
Too many action items have been
left on the table, and we are now beginning to see the costs of that inaction
on matters that really count.
Today, Governor Patrick talked about the importance of
seizing opportunities. But we might not have
even been in such a precarious position if the Governor had approved, rather
than vetoed, legislative initiatives that would have allowed Massachusetts
businesses to thrive and grow. Allowing
business tax payments to be made on a quarterly basis, extending brownfields
tax credits for rehabilitating presently unusable sites, and providing a three-year
tax credit for start-up corporations would have removed some of the barriers
that businesses have told us are real impediments to growth. These were
all sent to the Governor’s desk with bipartisan support and rejected. With the unemployment rate rising to 6.6
percent, no government priority should be higher than getting Massachusetts
residents back to work.
We are facing a clear choice
now.
We can continue down the same path
and find ourselves having to make additional cuts, or we can take decisive actions,
such as appointing a fiscal control board for the MBTA and halting planned
expansions of lines and services when we can’t afford the ones we already have.
It’s time for the Legislature to revisit and
take action on initiatives to control the cost of health care, including moving
Medicaid patients to managed care and addressing costly health care
mandates.
It’s time to provide relief to
businesses from the
crushing
burden of unemployment insurance rates that are among the highest in the
nation. And it’s also time for
the Gaming Commission to accelerate efforts to bring in new revenues, and that
revenue should be spent to avoid cuts and to support existing commitments,
rather than funding new spending programs.
The proposal of these cuts is a
call for action to spur economic growth and avoid future cuts before important
programs like local aid are further imperiled.”
