Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page featured this piece headlined:
Four Governors on How to Cut Spending
Among them: Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Staples) on smart shopping for office supplies ($14 million saved!); California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Am I Retired Yet?) on public employee pension reform (make them pay more!); and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Cut ‘n’ Freeze) on cutting and freezing state spending.
Oh, yes – and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D-We’re #5!) on, well, everything his campaign ads say.
Representative sample:
Massachusetts increased its investment in education—because education is our calling card around the world—and sustained it because second graders don’t get to sit out the second grade until the recession is over.
Sound familiar? See here:
Patrick’s boffo ending in the Journal piece:
We’re getting results. Massachusetts’s rate of job growth is the highest in the nation, having added nearly 65,000 jobs so far since December. The state economy is growing at 6.4%, twice the annual rate. CNBC rates us the fifth best place in the U.S. for business.
Okay. The coveted CNBC endorsement. Game over, yeah?
Think Charlie Baker is calling the Journal right now for equal time?
Yeah, me too.
Increased investment, eh?
Doesn’t that mean spending more money?
Doesn’t that mean more taxes to pay for the investment since the state’s budget must be balanced?
Does the Governor think that the Massachusetts worker doesn’t see that his pay check doesn’t go as far as it did a year or so ago?
Well, I know that a pound of Italian sausages at Market Basket that used to sell of $2.49, now goes for $2.99. I notice that more than any increased taxes, and I’ve hated the sales tax since its inception back in the Volpe era.