by Kay Monaco, Executive
Director
New Mexico Voices for Children
New Mexicans are faced
with a choice: continue to phase in personal income tax cuts that will not result
in economic stimulus, but will strip our state of funds to support education and
healthcare; or stop the personal income tax cuts where they are (6% for top earners,
down from 8.2% in 2003) and maintain a healthy state budget.
The question
is one of priorities. So far, top income earners have received on average more
than $7,000 in state income tax cuts, plus significant savings from federal tax
cuts. Meanwhile, we've whittled down Medicaid so that families with disabled children
who have no bowel and bladder control must struggle to buy diapers, or watch their
children go into a hospital and be intubated because Medicaid no longer pays for
the expensive liquid nutrition formula they need to stay at home.
It appears
that we are to rationalize these healthcare losses, believing that they balance
the scales when weighed against tax cuts we're told will strengthen the economy.
Sadly, the data are clear: there will be no economic boost from personal
income tax cuts, and there is no way to repair the healthcare losses we've already
suffered. This session, the fight is to prevent more harm, but there is no hope
to replace the funds necessary to pay for diapers or nutritional formula.
A
recent article in the Albuquerque Journal (Gov.'s Staff Heaps Praise on Tax Cuts,
February 12, 2005) does not respond to the research published by New Mexico Voices
for Children showing that the tax cuts are a failed experiment and should be stopped.
Job growth, personal income, job quality, median income, percentage of the population
in poverty, percentage of people without health insurance, and per capita income
- all remain where they were before the start of the current administration and
the 2003 tax cuts.
The best that the governor's staff can offer is a weak
claim that the tax cuts need more time. This particularly disturbing in light
of the administration's own reports that say it is not true. In the 2004 Post-Session
Fiscal Review, the Governor's Department of Finance and Administration performed
an analysis of the 2003 personal income tax cuts that showed negative job and
personal income growth in 2008. Nevertheless, Secretary Homans and Assistant Secretary
O'Donnell tell us that the economy is improving and that the future looks rosy.
They offer no new data and no new analyses to support those claims. Meanwhile,
real people are suffering.
This administration and lawmakers claimed they
could catapult New Mexico to the head of the line, or at least kick us up a few
rungs in the state ratings, with a quick tax fix. It hasn't happened and it's
not going to. To move ahead, we need a much more thoughtful, rational and deliberate
policy that will ensure economic growth in New Mexico.
How can we have
an economic future when our math and reading scores are 49th, our high school
completions are 41st, and we have the highest rate of uninsured children in the
country?
The current tax cuts will so impoverish the state that there will
be no money to strengthen our education and health infrastructures. We need to
make a choice for strategies that have real results instead of rhetoric, and that
invest in the state's human capital instead of depleting our coffers.
