The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate

End the income tax in Massachusetts?

There are two state ballot initiatives this year which excite me a lot-- and neither one is in my state.

The first is the initiative to end the income tax in Massachusetts, which actually is sorta my state-- it's my original home state. The initiative is primarily sponsored by Carla Howell, the Libertarian candidate for Governor, and Michael Cloud, the LP senatorial candidate. It's called the Small Government Act. They have really been working relentlessly on both the initiative and their individual campaigns for the past year or more. The initiative is reportedly running at 40% in the polls, despite the fact that pretty much every voice of influence in the state is against it-- the big politicians, the interest groups, etc.. I expect they're freaking out a bit, at the prospect of losing $9 billion of the people's money. They all insist there's simply no way to reasonably operate the government with only $14 billion a year.

I think Carla Howell's response to them is pretty hard to fight-- she basically counters that Michael Dukakis' administration in the mid-late 80's had a budget that was half of the $23 billion of the current administration-- and Dukakis was a big government Democrat. IIRC, his budget was about $12 billion. Adjust that for inflation, and you probably get something like $15 or $16 billion. But it's at $23B now. It sounds to like she's just asking folks to trim off the all the bloat. Everyone knows government is big and inefficient-- the reason it is is because it can be. Generally, voters gripe and groan, but they keep voting the same type of folks in, thinking they have no real choice, and those folks continue to raise the budget each year.

No one expects that Carla Howell will win the Governor's race, so MA voters still have "no real choice" in that situation. But what they could do is vote one of the two "major" candidates in as Governor, but then force that Democrat or Republican to really slim down the government. Both of the two main candidates act like they couldn't possibly cut $9 Billion from their budgets. But what if they had to?