We admit, sometimes the DC Fiscal Policy Institute can be a little parochial. Take how we read the newspaper most days. We turn to the local news section first and prioritize all DC-related stories. But just as we advocate for broadening our sales tax, we’ve been on a kick to broaden our reading, too’even to news outlets that don’t feature the words Washington or DC.
Take this editorial in Monday’s New York Times, arguing against a cuts-only approach to New York’s budget. It suggests a better choice for the Empire State is to keep a surcharge on those with taxable income above $200,000. “Without that surcharge and other targeted tax increases, [Governor Andrew] Cuomo’s proposed cuts in education and other vital services will inevitably be deeper and more painful than necessary, harming both individuals and the foundation for the state’s future economic growth.”
That statement applies to DC as well. DC is unique in many ways, but our current budget problems are not different from many other states and cities. And the impact of cutting deep into health and human service agencies’that have already taken big cuts for three years during the economic recession’will be as devastating to DC as the Times suggests they will be for New York: “That means that New York’s most vulnerable citizens ‘ schoolchildren, the elderly, the poor, the sick ‘ will feel a disproportionate amount of the pain.”
We don’t need to even go outside the Beltway to see other examples of how a cuts-only approach can devastate critical services that keep families afloat. The front page of today’s Washington Post Metro section has a story about several prominent nonprofit organizations that have formed a “united front” to lobby against devastating cuts in neighboring Fairfax County.
Sharon Bulova, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, got the message. She told the Post that she and her fellow elected officials would likely reject deep cuts to the county’s social services budgets. “Fairfax County has consistently done right by the people who need our help, even during the Great Recession,” said Bulova.
We know Mayor Gray, DC Council Chairman Kwame Brown and the 12 members of the DC Council want to do right by DC residents as well. The best way to do that is to keep our forward momentum out of this tough recession by taking a balanced approach to our budget with a mix of cuts and revenue. We urge Mayor Gray to include in his budget a proposal similar to the one in New York’a bump in the tax rate for households with income above $200,000. As the Times notes, a tax increase on high earners would be more than offset by the federal tax breaks these households receive from the renewal of Bush-era tax cuts, and this would be true in the District as well.
Certainly tough times call for tough decisions. We can’t say it better than the Times, so we won’t: “Calling for painful spending cuts, it turns out, is the easy part,” the editorial concluded. “Calling for relatively painless tax increases requires real political courage.”
