Our View: Nurses’ tax plan should be non-starter
While there may be reasonable arguments to be made for finding new sources of revenue to go along with the spending cuts needed to balance the federal budget, a tax hike being pushed by the Massachusetts Nurses Association is not one of them.
The rhetoric surrounding the union’s recent demonstrations in Boston and Worcester demanding that Sen. Scott Brown back a .05 percent tax on stock and securities transactions, smacks of proletarian revolt rather than sound fiscal policy.
"We’re here because Wall Street got bailed out, and Main Street was left out," wailed MNA President Donna Kelly-Williams during a rally outside Brown’s Boston office.
Her rant, as reported by the State House News Service, continued: "Big banks, investment houses and other financial giants who wrecked our economy and who gambled with our mortgages and pensions need to return some of that enormous wealth to Main Street. It’s time to take it back."
Not that the big banks and brokerages don’t deserve their share of the blame for the recent economic collapse, but instituting a new tax — one that would affect pensioners and those saving for retirement as much as it would the fat cats — is not the way to remedy things.
Getting costs under control must be the paramount goal of President Obama and Congress going forward, while vengeful tax policies of the sort advocated by MNA and its allies should be nonstarters.
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