STATEMENT OF KARYN POLITO ON THE STATE BUDGET

"The budget is held together with baling wire and bubble gum. Instead of dealing honestly with our fiscal problems, this budget puts off the hard and necessary decisions that confront us until after the next election. The truth is the spending cuts aren't big enough and there's too many one-time gimmicks and accounting tricks. The majority party is obviously backing themselves into another major tax increase next year by not cutting far enough. We need deeper, across-the-board spending cuts, and we need them now or we risk a much larger debt burden, higher taxes and even bigger cuts down the road."

STATEMENT OF KARYN POLITO ON GOVERNOR PATRICK'S PLAN FOR SPENDING CUTS

The U.S. Senate is considering legislation that will provide additional federal financial aid to state governments.

Until the Senate acts, this potential relief is merely speculative. As a contingency, Governor Patrick has proposed a three and one-half percent cut to this year's state budget, exempting local aid and debt service payments. My advice to the Governor is to go ahead and make the budget cut whether or not additional federal funding is forthcoming. I make this recommendation because next year's budget is going to be the worst we've seen in recent memory, with an opening deficit of more than $2 billion. It will make our current budget difficulties seem like a walk in the park. Making cuts now will prepare us for the necessary and hard decisions that are sure to follow.