'TAX CUTS AND CONSEQUENCES'

“Supporters of large tax cuts said they were affordable and would boost economic growth, but the data we’ve gathered about how states did during the [economic] downturn doesn’t support either of those arguments,” says Robert Zahradnik, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of “Tax Cuts and Consequences: The States that Cut Taxes the Most During the 1990s Have Suffered Lately.”

Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York—all states where AFT Public Employees have members—were among the six states that enacted the deepest tax cuts during the 1990s economic boom—reducing their revenue upwards of 10 percent.

The largest tax-cutting state was New York, which “faced deficits in excess of 20 percent of the budget during the fiscal crisis, had above-average spending cuts and tax increases, and received a bond rating downgrade,” Zahradnik found.

During the economic downturn, Colorado “cut spending by more than three times the national average and saw its bond rating downgraded in 2002,” according to Zahradnik. The culprits: personal income tax and state sales tax cuts combined with the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (see related story).

The report is available at www.cbpp.org.

BUSH UPS ATTACKS  ON WORKERS’ RIGHTS

The Bush administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued final regulations Jan. 26 implementing a new personnel system that opens the door to a pay system based on favoritism rather than job responsibilities and performance and further erodes workers’ rights.

The Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department of the federal government, describes the new system as one that “rewards performance, not longevity.”

AFL-CIO president John Sweeney strongly criticized the new system. In a statement, he said that federal “employees are more likely to become victims of cronyism, discrimination and arbitrary policy-making,” which the “equal pay for equal work” system guarded against.

In addition, the new system further constricts workers’ rights to collectively bargain and all but eliminates employees’ due-process rights, which protected workers from arbitrary personnel actions and provided security to workers who report wrongdoing and mismanagement.