1,700 miles away, O'Malley says no to taxes
Gov. Martin O'Malley spent the weekend in Denver for a meeting of the National Governors Association, a group that grew redder with Republicans on Nov. 2. There, the incumbent Democrat told a Bloomberg reporter that Maryland's budget will be balanced entirely with cuts.
From the Bloomberg piece:
“We’re going to be on a constant diet of deep and painful cuts,” he said. The trick, he said, will be preserving the state’s economic resiliency, he said.
"There are certain priorities that we must protect in order to continue to come out of this recession,” he said. O’Malley said he hoped to spare college affordability and tax credits for research-job creation from the deepest reductions.
Areas that may be cut, he said, are corrections, employee costs, pensions and Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for the poor.
Analysts for the Maryland General Assembly say that the state faces a $1.6 billion gap next fiscal year, created in part by flagging revenues and growing costs of health care and other state services. O'Malley's deficit estimate is slightly lower.
Comments
See! All those Ehrlich supporters were right! The first thing he's going to do is raise our taxes!!
Is anyone surprised that Ehrlich's campaign of fear was way off base and the right-wing nuts in this state were wrong as usual?
O'Malley is actually turning out to be more of a traditional conservative than any of the new bread of extremist Tea Party Republicans.
Posted by: George | November 25, 2010 5:48 PM