Your State Rep Probably Took a Bad Vote Yesterday. But They Can Take a Good One Tomorrow.

If we want to have an equitable recovery from the pandemic and the related recession, we need to invest in our public schools, our public infrastructure, our public health system, and our social safety net in all its forms.

And that requires money.

Unfortunately, the MA House hasn’t gotten the memo. The budget that it’s currently debating fails to deliver on the promises made in the Student Opportunity Act last year and shortchanges public services across the state.

Legislators have a choice of whether to invest in an equitable economic recovery or accept a dangerous trajectory that leaves the most vulnerable behind.

Yesterday, 127 state representatives chose the latter, voting against a common-sense amendment from Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) to tax unearned income (income from non-retirement investments and other forms of asset ownership, such as stocks, bonds, and dividend and interest income) at a higher rate than earned income (income from wages and salaries, as well as pensions, annuities, 401k, IRAs, and other similar retirement accounts). Unearned income goes overwhelmingly to corporate shareholders and other high-income individuals, and a modest increase could generate significant sums of money to fund public services.

Here was the vote.

You should let your legislator know what you think of their vote. But there’s an opportunity for them to do better.

Your representative may have voted the wrong way yesterday. But they can still take progressive votes if the following amendments are brought to the floor.

Emergency Paid Sick Time 

Urge your state representative to support Amendment #231 — Emergency Paid Sick Time, which would provide ten additional work-days (80 hours) of job-protected emergency paid sick time for immediate use during the COVID-19 outbreak to workers not covered by federal emergency paid sick time protections.

Strengthening Reproductive Rights

Amendment #759 — Improved Access to Health Care would remove medically unnecessary barriers to abortion care. It doesn’t contain everything from the ROE Act, but it contains many vital provisions and would be a significant step forward. Voters have made clear that reproductive health care matters, and with abortion and other health care under threat from an anti-abortion Supreme Court, it’s time for Massachusetts to act.

You can also join the ROE coalition in a phone bank tonight or tomorrow night.

Find your state representative’s contact information here.

Eight Months of Emergency without Emergency Paid Sick Time

Tomorrow marks eight months to the day since Governor Baker issued a state of emergency.

And our Legislature still hasn’t passed emergency paid sick time legislation.

Low-wage workers are our first line of defense against COVID-19, but they are feeling the greatest economic impact of the outbreak. Healthcare and long-term care workers, janitorial workers, food service workers, child care workers, municipal workers, adjunct faculty, gig workers, and others on the front lines are critical to supporting our communities during the OVID-19 outbreak.

But many of these front-line workers are struggling economically and lack basic economic protections including adequate paid sick time.

The MA House has the opportunity THIS WEEK to take action via the budget.

But there’s more. 

The proposed budget by the MA House fails to deliver on the promises made in the Student Opportunity Act last year. Our Governor and our Legislature made a promise to students, teachers, and community members that they would fully fund public schools. In a wealthy state like ours, they can’t punt on this obligation and hide behind manufactured budget constraints.

Legislators have a choice of whether to invest in an equitable economic recovery or accept a dangerous trajectory that leaves the most vulnerable behind.

Can you call or email your legislators in support of these four amendments? Find their contact info here.

  • Amendment #231 (Donato) — Emergency  Paid Sick Time
  • Amendment #524 (Sabadosa) — Increase the Tax Rate on Corporate Profits
  • Amendment #675 (Connolly) —Increase  the Tax Rate that Investors Pay on Unearned Income
  • Amendment #719 (Gouveia) —Tax Profits Shifted Overseas by Increasing the Tax Rate on ‘GILTI’

More about the amendments below

Amendment #231 (Donato) — Emergency Paid Sick Time. Would provide ten additional work-days (80 hours) of job-protected emergency paid sick time for immediate use during the COVID-19 outbreak to workers not covered by federal emergency paid sick time protections. This would allow workers with COVID symptoms to stay home so they can recover and not risk infecting others. As we enter a difficult winter with increasing rates of infection, Emergency Paid Sick Time is urgently needed to limit the spread of COVID19.

Amendment #524 (Sabadosa) — Increase the Tax Rate on Corporate Profits. Would raise the current corporate profits tax rate of 8.0% to the pre-2010 rate of 9.5%, generating $375 to $500 million annually for investments in an equitable recovery. Businesses that are turning a profit should be expected to contribute more to support the public goods on which their profits are based, especially during a public health and state fiscal crisis.  

Amendment #675 (Connolly) — Increase the Tax Rate that Investors Pay on Unearned Income. Would tax unearned income (income from non-retirement investments and other forms of asset ownership, such as stocks, bonds, and dividend and interest income) at a higher rate than earned income (income from wages and salaries, as well as pensions, annuities, 401k, IRAs, and other similar retirement accounts), generating millions annually for investments in an equitable recovery. Unearned income goes overwhelmingly to corporate shareholders and other high-income individuals, who should be expected to contribute more to support the public goods on which we all depend.  

Amendment #719 (Gouveia) — Tax Profits Shifted Overseas by Increasing the Tax Rate on ‘GILTI’. Would adopt a provision of federal law to tax a portion of MA-based corporate profits that are shifted overseas, raising $200 to $400 million annually for investments in an equitable recovery. Many multinational corporations that do business in MA dodge taxes by using complex accounting schemes that make their MA-based profits appear to have been earned in offshore tax havens. A federal provision called ‘GILTI’ identifies this shifted income and allow states to tax a portion of it.

Go Big or Don’t Go Home

In a mere eleven days — on Friday, July 31st, at 11:59 pm — the legislative session in the Massachusetts State House comes to an end.

The bills that didn’t make it past the finish line this year will disappear into the ether or return like a phoenix from the ashes in January next year, only to face the same grueling process.

But there are many policies that can’t wait until January. Indeed, passing them now is already far later than should have been done. And, frankly, the Legislature shouldn’t get to leave session until they finish.

What priorities are we talking about?

  • Passing the Safe Communities Act so that state and local law enforcement aren’t being deputized as ICE agents
  • Passing the Work and Family Mobility Act because mobility is a basic right, regardless of one’s citizenship status
  • Passing the ROE Act because MA needs to strengthen reproductive rights here at home as they remain under attack on the federal level
  • Passing the 100% Renewable Energy Act because we can’t keep stumbling forward into climate chaos
  • Passing Emergency Paid Sick Time so that no worker has to choose between their health and their job security
  • Passing guaranteed housing stability for at least one more year ​because if we want people to stay at home, they need a home to go back to
  • Passing a budget that raises Progressive Revenue by making sure that corporations and the rich are paying their fair share

The Legislature can’t keep punting session after session and patting themselves on the back.

Can you call or email your state legislators about taking real action before the session ends — or staying in until they do?

Go Big or Don't Go Home

Four Weeks Left….

Unless anything changes, four weeks from today — Friday, July 31st — the formal part of the 191st Legislative Session of the Massachusetts General Court will come to an end.

That means that there are four weeks for the MA Legislature to up its game on pretty much every single front.

Four weeks for them to take action in support of immigrants’ rights, such as passing the Safe Communities Act and the Work & Family Mobility Act.

Four weeks for them to take action in support of reproductive justice by passing the ROE Act.

Four weeks for them to tackle the systemic racism in policing and the criminal legal system.

Four weeks for them to tackle our affordable housing crisis (and just over a month for them to take action before the eviction moratorium passed earlier this year expires).

Four weeks for them to take action to address climate change because Mother Nature doesn’t care about self-imposed deadlines.

Four weeks for them to pass Emergency Paid Sick Time so that workers don’t have to choose between their health and their job security in a global pandemic.

Four weeks for them to pass a budget that lives up to our values by raising progressive revenue to avoid deep, harmful cuts in public services.

None of this will happen unless your legislators hear from you — loud and clear — that they can’t keep procrastinating. That they can’t keep punting issues to later and later in the session until each session runs out. And then the cycle of excuse-making and delay continues.

Can you call your legislators to demand action in these final four weeks?

Find their contact information here, and then save it for next time.

SHNS and MassLive Report on the Revenue Debate

“Revenue a hot topic; not in spending debate” — Chris Lisinski and Michael Norton, State House News Service (4/23/2019)

“The House has once again failed to enact policies that the overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters support,” Jonathan Cohn, Progressive Massachusetts’s issue committee chair, said in a press release. “When you’re stuck on a disabled train tomorrow or your child’s school announces that it is cutting its art and music programs at the end of this year, the blame for that rests solely with our state legislature.” 

*****************

“Massachusetts House to talk about raising revenue, but not as part of budget debate” — Shira Schoenberg, MassLive (4/22/2019)

Jonathan Cohn, of Progressive Massachusetts, said in a statement, “When you’re stuck on a disabled train tomorrow or your child’s school announces that it is cutting its art and music programs at the end of this year, the blame for that rests solely with our state legislature.”

Voters: Tax the Rich and Big Corporations, Invest More in Transportation

Anybody who has ever waited in a station for perpetually delayed trains, driven through potholes, or sat in traffic congestion for hours on end knows that we have a transportation problem.

Indeed, a report earlier this year found that Boston had the worst rush-hour traffic of any major city. But this isn’t just a Boston issue: voters across the state think that transportation should be a higher priority for the Legislature.

According to a new survey from WBUR and MassINC, 77% of voters support raising new money to invest in the Massachusetts transportation system, with similar numbers across regions.

So what can we do about it?

The WBUR/MassINC poll tested various proposals.

WBUR Poll 2019 Transportation Revenue

The two most popular proposals for raising revenue were value capture and the Transportation Climate Initiative. In the former, the state would collect contributions from real estate development projects near highways or public transportation to help pay for that transportation infrastructure: in other words, the private developers are making a profit due to public investments, and the public deserves to share in that prosperity. Under the TCI, Massachusetts (and other participating states) would charge gasoline distributors a fee based on the amount of pollution their fuels produce.

What do these have in common? They’re taxing corporations. In a Gallup poll from two years ago, 67% of Americans said that corporations were paying too little in taxes.

Those at the bottom — a 15-cent gas tax increase, a hike in RMV fees, and adding tolls for driving to Logan — are directly felt by individuals. We can debate how regressive a gas tax is (the poor are much less likely to spend *any* money on gasoline), but what is clear is that it is not a politically sustainable foundation for revenue by itself.

The Fair Share Amendment, or “millionaire’s tax,” won’t be on the ballot until 2022, but we already know that this 4% surtax on income over $1 million is popular. The latest polling showed it had 69% support.

But we can’t wait until 2023. There are a variety of other ways that we can raise money from corporations and the rich right now.

Raise Up Massachusetts, for instance, is advocating for two in particular. First, we can tax GILTI (Global Intangible Low Taxed Income). Many multinational corporations who do business in MA use provisions of the federal tax code to shift their US profits to offshore tax havens. The federal tax code has provisions to tax some of that income; our state tax code should as well.

Second, many large corporations who do business in MA use various tax breaks and loopholes to pay only the existing corporate minimum tax of $456 per year. That’s right: only $465. We can–and should–create a tiered corporate minimum tax so that that larger corporations pay a minimum in proportion to the size of their business in MA.

Moreover, debates about corporate taxes often suffer from a lack of hard numbers–and that’s because of how evasive corporations are. Stronger rules around corporate disclosure would help identify bad actors in the business community and allow us to measure the effects of the loopholes in our existing corporate tax rules.

But why stop there?

If we’re talking about transportation, we can eliminate the absurd tax exemption for the sale and purchase of airplanes. It makes sense to exempt necessary goods from the sales tax, but last I checked, airplanes aren’t necessary personal goods.

We could also raise the capital gains tax. The highest-income 1 percent of households receive approximately 80 percent of capital gains income in Massachusetts, while the bottom 80 percent of households receive only 3 percent. And these high-income individuals clearly reap a benefit from our infrastructure investments: without them, how would they or their employees get to work or to meetings, and how would the goods and services on which their incomes depend get to market?

MassBudget has even more ideas, which they spelled out earlier this year here.

Overall, though, the message should be clear. We need to start investing more in our infrastructure, and in a wealthy state like ours, the rich and big corporations need to pay up.

What Do Raytheon, Staples, and GE Have in Common? They Don’t Pay Enough in Taxes.

The bad news: Train derailments. The certified worst traffic in the country. Underfunded public schools. Tuition hikes at public colleges and universities. A growing statewide affordable housing crisis. Every day, we see new examples of how Massachusetts is in dire need of new revenue.

The good news: This is a problem that we can fix.

The MA legislature has made numerous public commitments to raise new revenue this coming fall. It’s a promise we need to hold them to.

But business groups and corporate lobbyists have been meeting with legislators to push for regressive taxes that take the burden off them and put it on working people.

That’s not right. Because we know that these large corporations are not paying their fair share.

So it’s time to make our values heard by the Legislature.

With our partners around the state in the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition, we’ve launched a quality call campaign, asking activists to call their legislators and make perfectly clear what our expectations for any revenue package are:

  1. Any near-term revenue proposals must include a commitment to move the Fair Share Amendment through the legislative process.
  2. Fair: Economically progressive, to bring the share of income paid by higher-income people more in line with that paid by lower-income people. 
  3. Sustainable: Supported by the public and capable of surviving attempted repeal, so that we can count on the revenue to make necessary investments. 
  4. Adequate: Raises enough revenue to meet the Commonwealth’s needs.

Having technical difficulties and unable to use the tool above? Please email info@raiseupma.org or text 857-242-0412 with the outcomes of your call, including:

  • Which legislator did you call?
  • Did you talk to your legislator or an aide?
  • Did your legislator commit to supporting progressive revenue? 
  • How would your legislator suggest we raise revenue?

We Can’t Keep Shortchanging Our Future

Yesterday, US News & World Report ranked Massachusetts #1 in the country in education. That’s all well and good, but that hides more than it reveals.

That’s because we have one of the most unequal education systems in the country: the children in Lawrence and Brockton are not getting the same quality of education as students in Dover and Weston.

The question is not whether we are doing more than other states but whether we are doing as much as we need to–and as much as our students deserve.

The answer there is a clear no. Four years ago, the Foundation Budget Review Commission found that Massachusetts is shortchanging local aid to public schools by up to $2 billion a year because of outdated calculations of the cost of health care, special education, English Language Learner education, and closing income-based achievement gaps.

The picture isn’t any better when it comes to higher education. Due to misguided tax cuts from almost twenty years ago, we’ve been disinvesting from our public colleges and universities, leading to deeper cuts, higher tuition, and spiraling student debt.

We can do better. And we will demand that our legislators do better.

That’s why we’re proud to join the Fund Our Future coalition today for a rally in support of the PROMISE Act and the CHERISH Act today at 5pm at the State House. There will be actions starting at 1 pm, so if you can make it earlier, even better.

Will we see you there?

Fund Our Future Rally

And If You Can’t Make It…

If you can’t make it in person, then you can still call your legislators in support of the PROMISE Act (S.238/H.586) and the CHERISH Act (S.741/H.1214).

  • The PROMISE Act would fix our outdated school funding formula to more accurately and equitably distribute resources – giving all schools the funding they need to deliver high-quality education.
  • The CHERISH Act would commit the Commonwealth to funding public higher education at 2001 levels, adjusted for inflation.

You can check if your legislators are already co-sponsors of the PROMISE Act here.

But Wait…There’s More…

The Senate is voting on its budget next week. And your senator has the opportunity to support raising new revenue and investing more in our students. 

Let your senator know that you support these amendments:

  • Statutory Charter Tuition Reimbursement (Chang-Diaz, #323): Would invest an additional $90 million in struggling school districts that are losing money due to charter school growth by closing corporate tax loopholes
  • Funding Low-Income Student Undercount (Chang-Diaz, #320): Would add more money for struggling school districts that have been shortchanged due to a flawed methodology for counting the low-income student population
  • Corporate Tax Rate Restoration (Rausch, #53): Would raise the corporate income tax back up to 9.5%, raising $375 million in additional revenue
  • Aircraft Prats (Eldridge, #46): Would close an absurd tax exemption for sales of luxury planes, raising $21 million in additional revenue
  • Single Sales Factor (Eldridge, #37): Would close a corporate tax loophole that lets corporations get away with not paying taxes on property and payroll, raising $143 million in additional revenue

Can we count on you to call your senator?

CommonWealth: Don’t let corporations limit our policy ambitions

PM Issues Committee chairman Jonathan Cohn penned an editorial for CommonWealth on the need for the MA Legislature to be bolder in its policy ambitions, especially around taxes and housing. Read the full piece here and an excerpt below:

LAST SESSION, one of the only significant bills that Massachusetts legislators passed before budget season was sweeping legislation to raise their own pay. By contrast, this year, the Legislature has already passed important bills to lift a retrograde welfare cap and ban the homophobic and abusive practice of conversion therapy.

This could be a sign that the Legislature is interested in being more proactive this session, and that would be a welcome change indeed.

There are plenty of issues that the Legislature can—and should—tackle this session, all of which require bold and comprehensive policy solutions and all of which face the same risk: that the Legislature lets the business lobby set the limits of its ambitions.