Mass. Non-Profits and Unions Must Unite to Fight Gov. Patrick's Budget Cuts

As widely predicted, Gov. Deval Patrick dropped the hammer of austerity this week and announced over $1 billion in budget cuts - including the layoff over over 1000 state employees - using the "9C" powers afforded him under Chapter 29, Section 9C of the Massachusetts General Laws. With most of the state budget devoted to delivering a wide array of social services, the cuts were bad news for working families in the Commonwealth.

According to a briefing just released by the Mass. Budget and Policy Center, virtually no important budget area is left untouched by the cuts - which Patrick himself stated were biting into the muscle of state government, not just the fat.

The official explanation for this precipitous action is that a budget shortfall of over $1.4 billion is expected in tax receipts for 2009 fiscal year - $300 million of the total being scheduled cost increases - exacerbated by a drop in capital gains revenue as the financial crisis accelerates. In order to keep the current budget balanced without - and this is key - raising taxes - Patrick has been compelled to raise taxes after dipping into the Bay State's dwindling "rainy day funds" left over from the boom days of the late 1990s to cover the rest.

What he will not do is the one thing which will improve the situation. Balance the state budget by raising taxes on the rich and corporations that can afford it. The fact that Patrick will ultimately have to do so seems to elude him for the moment. But if the 2nd quarter of the 2009 budget was bad, the 3rd quarter will be worse - given world developments. And subsequent quarters will be worse still. And eventually there will be a simple choice to make - either cease to have a state government as the increasingly ludicrous-sounding Libertarian Party would have it, or raise taxes.

Of course, the longer state government waits to raise taxes the worse for everybody - and before it raises taxes on the rich, it will almost certainly trying to raise taxes on working people. But that won't solve the problem.

Now, we're not going to review the details of the cuts here. Interested viewers - and we're sure that everyone is going to be interested - can read the MBPC's fine breakdown of the situation here.

Instead, we want to talk strategy today. Open Media Boston is a publication of the broad progressive movement in Boston. A movement that includes inumerable social service non-profits as well as much of the labor movement. All the forces that stand to lose in the emerging neoliberal order.

For the last few days since it's become evident that Patrick was going to follow the path of least resistance, we've been receiving pleas for help from non-profits and unions representing several sectors under fire from the cuts. Each one critical in its own right.

But as old Tom Paine famously said a couple of hundred years back in the opening days of the American Revolution, "We can either hang together. Or hang separately." Never were truer words spoken in times of crisis for any group that represents the interests of the many rather than the interests of the few.

Yet all the pleas are saying "help OUR sector." Not "fight for all the sectors under the axe." And certainly not "fight the system that caused the cuts to begin with." And with things going from bad to worse in the economy this is precisely the wrong message to be sending to organizational memberships at this moment.

Instead, we strongly suggest that all the non-profits and unions that can manage it band together to turn Patrick's strategy into the path of MOST resistance. That you all band together - as is happening in states like New York even now - and begin forming grand coalitions to fight the cuts across the board, and demand solutions to the financial crisis that uphold the public interest over the very private interests that got us into this mess to begin with.

Failure to take this simple if bold step will surely result in each social sector "hanging" separately. And down that path lies a Massachusetts that none of us will be proud of. Gov. Patrick perhaps least of all. So that is what he has to hear early and often from as many organizations as possible.

This strategy is simple, powerful, and time-tested in many similar situations around the world. All that's lacking is the will to do it.

So we'll be waiting to see if non-profits and unions get the message and start mounting a serious fight-back. As ever, we're interested to hear some dialogue from our viewers - and our lines are open ...