Gabrieli’s “Tax Cut” Is Actually A Spending Increase

Virginia Buckingham explains…

Gabrieli lied about his own tax cut plan. ‘‘Forty percent of all revenue increases above where we’ve been,’’ Gabrieli promised when describing his plan to devote new tax revenues to the income tax roll back.

That’s simply not true.

Gabrieli’s plan is to grow the state government from its current size by the rate of inflation and then and only then send some money taxpayers’ way. In real dollars, in today’s terms, that means some $650 million in the first year of a Gabrieli administration would be skimmed off the top of revenue growth for new spending, not tax cuts. Over a four-year Gabrieli administration, inflation alone would account for $3 billion in new spending. And why can’t taxpayers get their 5 percent income tax in one bite, again?

Who knows? After all, we did vote for it.

Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.