Posted at GP.org. Reposted to IPR by Paulie.

Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 16, 2009

Contacts:
Jill Stein, 781-674-1377, 617-852-4727, jillstein1@gmail.com, GRP co-chair
Nat Fortune, 413-774-1950, 413-665-6739, nat.fortune@comcast.net, former GRP co-chair & current Whately School Committee Member.

Responding to the $1.8 billion cuts in the House budget, the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts is calling out the Democrats for breaking their promises to Massachusetts voters.

“While Democrats in D.C. are giving hundreds of billions of tax dollars to their friends on Wall Street, the Democrats in Boston are slashing local aid. They’re hitting Massachusetts families from both directions,” says Jill Stein, co-chair of the Green Rainbow Party (GRP). “Corporations get a bailout. Working families get a black eye.”

The House budget unveiled Wednesday slashes non-school local aid by 25% and includes no significant proposals for boosting revenue. This flies in the face of the Democratic campaign promises, according to the GRP. Stein points to the language of the Massachusetts Democratic platform, which states: “We oppose the Republican administration policy of giving tax breaks to the wealthiest individuals, and of irresponsible deficit financing of a war that depletes the federal budget. These policies unfairly increase the tax burden at the state and local level.” (See http://massdems.org/about/platform.cfm)

“Those are fine words”, says former GRP co-chair Nat Fortune, “but the Democrats have the White House and Congress, and Massachusetts is their one-party state. They control every single statewide office in Massachusetts and 90% of the Legislature. Who are they going to blame now?”

Massachusetts has a flat-rate income tax of 5.3%, which leading Democrats have refused to touch. The GRP has called for measures to make taxes fair – by asking the very wealthy to pay their share, and reducing taxes and fees for middle and lower income families. Such measures would include implementing a progressive income tax, which would require a change to the state constitution. Interim measures could feature a combination of reforms that would increase revenues while reducing the tax burden for working families – namely increasing the tax rate while greatly boosting the individual deduction. The GRP also calls for eliminating wasteful subsidies through measures such as single payer health care, which makes health care accessible and affordable for all, while drastically reducing current costs imposed by administrative red tape and exorbitant CEO salaries.

Picking up on House Speaker DeLeo’s description of his House budget as “a portrait of the economy,” Fortune said “it’s certainly a portrait: a self portrait of a party with no solutions for the problems of ordinary people and a planet in crisis.”

Stein added “A real opposition would be calling the ruling party to account, but Beacon Hill Republicans are quite happy to go along to get along. It’s a sign of just how much the two traditional parties now cooperate in defending the status quo.”

According to Lloyd Smith, GRP communications director, “The Democrats and Republicans are fully committed to a system that accumulates wealth in the hands of the powerful. The Green Party nationally, and the Green-Rainbow Party in Massachusetts, stand for redefining wealth to reflect the well-being of the people.”