Candidate counters with own stimulus package
Times Argus, April 19, 2008, by Peter Hirschfeld (link to article).
MONTPELIER — Just two days after Gov. James Douglas announced plans for a $100 million stimulus package, his only official challenger in the fall election unveiled his own proposal to rehabilitate Vermont’s ailing economy.
Anthony Pollina, a Middlesex Progressive, announced a public-works initiative that would use more than $100 million in new government spending to put Vermonters to work on some of the state’s most pressing infrastructure needs.
“It includes strategies not just to strengthen the economy, but actually strengthen working families — put money back in the pockets of people so they can pay their bills and spend some of it on Main Street,” Pollina said at a Statehouse press conference Friday.
Funding for the proposal relies on an increase in the capital gains tax — a source Douglas had looked to tap earlier this year. Whereas Douglas would have used the new revenue to offset a decrease in the income tax, Pollina’s plan calls for aggressive spending on transportation, affordable housing and an infusion of government money into Vermont’s “green” sector.
Vermont could reap an estimated $20 million annually by closing a capital gains loophole that allows wages to be taxed at a higher rate than investment income.
Pollina would use some of the money to fund a $75 million transportation bond, to be paid off in annual installments of $5 million. His plan also spends $5 million annually, for four years, on new affordable housing units, and another $4 million annually, for four years, on construction and renovation projects that employ green technologies to increase energy efficiency. Total spending under the plan is $111 million over four years.
“We need to talk not just about how we’re going to cut budgets, we need to talk about how we’re going to put people to work and how we’re going to stimulate the economy,” Pollina said.
Citing an economic forecast released earlier this week, Pollina said low- and middle-class Vermonters reaped none of the benefits of the economic expansion that preceded the recent downturn.
“The new wealth that was generated during this economic expansion, which is coming to an end, was not shared with working people,” Pollina said.
Pollina said his plan remedies the housing shortage and failing transportation infrastructure while infusing the Vermont economy with decent-paying jobs. That kind of inclusive economics, he said, distributes wealth in a way that benefits the long-term financial standing of the state.
“There’s a lot of jobs that can be created if we’re willing to come up with the revenue,” Pollina said.
Pollina, who said he is campaigning full time now, had harsh words for both Douglas and the Legislature as they work to pare nearly $25 million from the 2009 budget. Poor planning, Pollina said, set Vermont up for the current financial fiasco.
“Anybody’s who’s surprised we’re facing a deficit clearly has not been paying attention,” he said.
He also criticized items on the menu of proposed cuts being considered by legislators. Slashing funding in human-service programs, according to Pollina, can have more severe financial impacts than raising the taxes necessary to fully fund the measures.
“They’re talking about significant cuts, for example, in prescription drug and health-care program(s). It’s going to be devastating for seniors if those cuts go through,” Pollina said.
As governor, Pollina said, he’d consider revenue-generating schemes that include new taxes.
“Anyone who leaves this building and says we made the cuts but didn’t increase taxes isn’t really being honest with people,” he said. “Because if I’m getting a service from the government, and then the cost of that service goes up, why isn’t that any different than asking to raise revenue from people?”
Pollina called Douglas’ stimulus package a “phantom” proposal aimed more at political maneuvering than sincere economic strategizing.
“Our governor has the tendency to throw things into the lap of the Legislature and public at the last minute, and I think he does it for political reasons,” he said.
And he criticized leadership in the House and Senate for not beating Douglas to the punch with its own economic stimulus package. Douglas has said he will reveal details of his plan Saturday.
“They should take themselves out to the woodshed and ask some hard questions about why it is that they don’t have an economic stimulus plan,” Pollina said. “I think the legislators should have taken the time to sit around the table and anticipate the problem and say ‘We have a plan to move our economy forward.’ They don’t have to react to the current governor.”
April 24th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I believe Anthony is on the right track. The “trickle down economic theory” that is the Republican gospel clearly is a failure. More money given to those at the top of the wealth scale does not trickle down to those lower down. There is just so much money, and as we have seen, as the wealthy accumulate more, the middle class has less. Really, the way to economic security is to put more money in the hands of the working and middle class. Money to be spent on food and houses and transportation and health care and education. As money moves through the economy, all benefit, and eventually it concentrates at the top anyway! Anthony is correct to take the revenue from taxing capital gains as ordinary income and using it for infrastructure and housing improvements, programs that benefit workers and their families through job creation and benefit Vermont as a whole by improving roads and decreasing energy usage and cost.