As governor, Romney squeezed Masschusetts businesses for lots of new tax revenue

The NY Slimes via Hot Air ^ | October 2nd

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

“How could he do this to businesses as a business guy?” Joe Casey, then a top executive at a Massachusetts bank, Seacoast Financial, recalled asking colleagues whose companies had to pay up after the Romney administration closed a tax loophole. “It was very aggressive, and it was a surprise.”

For the next three years, the Romney administration relentlessly scoured the tax code for more loopholes, extracting hundreds of millions of corporate dollars to help close budget gaps in a state with a struggling economy. It was only after Mr. Romney was gearing up in 2005 for a possible White House bid that he backed away from some of his most assertive tax enforcement proposals amid intensifying complaints from local companies and conservative antitax groups in Washington…

An examination of the period reveals a more complicated picture. It shows a governor who sometimes put the need to find new revenues ahead of the conservative argument that tax increases almost by definition kill jobs; a shrewd financial manager who aides said was guided by a strong sense of rectitude, not just pragmatism; and a political aspirant willing to buck the orthodoxies of his own party — at least, state lawmakers said, until his national ambitions tempered that impulse and led him to steer a more conservative course.

Today Mr. Romney rarely, if ever, discusses on the campaign trail how he closed the Massachusetts tax loopholes.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

[TexasFreeper2009]

Finally, I would like to see articles like this posted 10 times a day minimum about Romney. The free ride he has gotten so far this election makes me sick.

[Inyo-Mono]

I agree. We’ve had enough anti-Perry and Cain slams the last few days.

[Cicero]

How can he do it? Because he’s an opportunist. Whatever it takes. He’ll take over corporations and fire people if that pays off for him. Or he’ll force gay marriage on all the clerks in Massachusetts if that what it takes to get votes there. Or he’ll raise taxes so he can brag that he has balanced the budget as governor.

[jgge]

Incredible isn’t it? The super liberal SOB Romney is sliding by and portraying himself as a the carrier of conservatism banner when he is one of the most liberal candidates in the modern history of the Republican Party. I guess Conservatives and Republicans should at the end decide if giving in state tuition to the children of illegal immigrant is more important and more dangerous than the super liberal record of Romney on a lot of issues and paramount among them Romneycare.

[TexasFreeper2009]

All I want is for ONE moderator to ask Romney if he has a name in mind for the planet he will be God of someday?

lol

[ken21]

that’s what the republican party has been about since the civil war:

large federal government

and

large taxes.

[ImpBill]

I thought we were only knocking Rick Perry on this forum!

[Paperdoll]

BUMP

[Diogenesis]

"As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.
* Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.
* Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.
* While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.
"Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents," professors Sum and McLaughlin concluded.
In an April 2003 meeting with the Massachusetts congressional delegation in Washington, Romney failed to endorse President Bush's $726 billion tax-cut proposal."
[Cato Institute annual Fiscal Policy Report Card - America's Governors, 2004.]