Last night Governor Paul LePage of Maine put forth an ambitious proposal. Put out a tax cut referendum. Let the people of Maine decide, "Do you support a $100 million dollar tax-cut for the taxpayers of the State of Maine, in exchange for a $100 million dollar reduction in spending?"
A simple proposal, but what does it mean? Because Maine is a small state, we can use this simple proposal to break down the real costs and benefits of tax and spending cuts to the average person. *Note: Been a while since I've written here, so please be kind.
What does a $100 million dollar tax cut mean for the people of the State of Maine? The short answer, not much. Let's take a most favorable look at the tax cut to see what the real benefits are.
First of all, we will assume that the tax cuts will benefit each person in the state equally. (We know this is not how tax cuts work, but for the sake of argument, we will put this forward.) The 2010 Census put the Maine population at a little over 1.3 million people. Simple math $100 million/1.3 million people would give each person about $75 a year more in their pockets to spend. For the very poor this would mean something. An extra $1.50 per week means a family of 4 could get an extra gallon of milk ($4.50) and a dozen eggs ($1.50) a week. For middle class people, the extra $1.50 a week could help pay for coffee, or if you saved it all up, a medium price dinner. For the wealthy, an extra $1.50 per week would be. . . insert your most useless reference to your most infantile waste of money possible. That kind of tax cut wouldn't register with the wealthy, because that kind of tax cut wouldn't be fair. A tax cut where the poor got the same as the rich would be a giveaway, so it is not the type of tax cut we are talking about. So let us pose the same question again.
What does a $100 million dollar tax cut mean for the people of the State of Maine? This time, let us take a look at the Governor's last tax cut, and apply its principles. The last Maine tax cut in 2010 reduced taxes by 150 million dollars. Much of that savings came in the form of a reduction of the top income tax rate from 8.5% to 7.95%. If the tax cut was similarly structured, roughly another .4% would be shaved off. In real terms, this is what would be saved. If you had an income of $25,000 dollars per year, your savings would be as much as $100 per year, or $1.92 a week. If you make $100,000 a year, you might save as much as $400 a year. The very wealthy, millionaires if you will, would see their tax burden go down by thousands of dollars. This is a more realistic, yet simplistic, view of how a $100 million dollar tax cut would be distributed. Even this model greatly exaggerates the benefits to the middle and lower class taxpayers. Trickle Down conservatives believe that every time you cut taxes, an angel gets its wings. The truth is $100 million dollars in tax cuts will be for the richest Mainers will benefit, and middle income and poor Mainers will see little or no benefit.
So what about the cost? Well, that question is easy to answer. A $100 million dollars in spending reductions will decrease money for Mainecare, revenue sharing for towns, infrastructure, and every program that the benefits the needy in Maine, save domestic violence funding. Over the past 3 years, the Governor has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to cut hundreds of millions of benefits to the poor. This is the party line. I cannot call this the Republican party line, or even the Tea Party party line, but instead the Corporatist party line. Cut taxes for the rich, benefits for the poor, and rights for workers. LePage has already laid this out as his agenda for this year, and will continue it into another 4 years if he wins re-election. How do we, as citizens of Maine, respond. If it gets that far, vote against the tax cut, and for all that is good in the world, do not let this man ever have a political stage again after November.