Republican Party leaders on Tuesday pounced on Senate President Stanley Rosenberg’s claim that Senate Democrats are ready to consider new or higher taxes to pay for investments in their priorities, with the GOP extending their criticism to all Beacon Hill Democrats.
Rosenberg, D-Amherst, on Tuesday said Senate Democratic leaders are “ever at the ready” to consider ways to generate new revenue to prop up areas of government spending, including public higher education. The state budget moving through the House this week proposes a 1 percent increase in spending on public higher education, and Rosenberg said the funding level proposed for the University of Massachusetts, state universities and community colleges comes up short. “That doesn’t even cover the collective bargaining agreements that are in law,” Rosenberg said during an interview on WGBH.
“This is a revenue problem,” Rosenberg told hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan.
Rosenberg predicted that on May 18 when House and Senate lawmakers consider a proposed constitutional amendment to tax high-income households a higher rate on earnings over $1 million that it will receive the necessary 50 votes to advance to the next legislative session. Supporters of that surtax hope to drive $1.9 billion in new revenues into education and transportation.
Rosenberg said senators had “some really good ideas to make the tax system fairer.”
“Senate President Rosenberg’s admission that he’s vigilantly looking for new ways to hike taxes reveals what we all knew: Beacon Hill Democrats just view working families as a constant source of more revenue for their spending sprees,” MassGOP Chairman Kirsten Hughes said in a statement Tuesday. “Massachusetts taxpayers deserve leaders who are responsible with their money – an approach that Rosenberg and Senate Democrats have clearly chosen not to take.”
Tax increases must be initiated in the House and Speaker Robert DeLeo, a Democrat from Winthrop, sided with Gov. Charlie Baker this year in opposing new or higher taxes as part of a state budget bill that raises total spending by about 3.5 percent. Baker has not taken a position on the “millionaire’s tax.”