Income Tax

The Committee for Small Government said Tuesday that Steve Forbes has endorsed its effort to abolish the state income tax with Question 1 on the November ballot.

Steve ForbesIn an editorial set to run in Forbes magazine next Monday, Forbes, a wealthy businessman and publisher of the magazine, said the measure will serve as a necessary wake-up call to the Democratic establishment in the Bay State.

"The reason the measure stands even a chance of passing is not that Bay State citizens are selfish (even though each would enjoy on average an additional $3,700 of income) but that they are angry," Forbes writes, according to an email sent by the Committee for Small Government obtained by PolitickerMA.com. "This is an attack on political establishments there and throughout the U.S. that routinely put their own interests above those of their constituents: lavish government pensions with payouts that would bankrupt private companies; resistance to genuine reform in Medicaid spending, which has become the biggest item on virtually every state's budget; ever more pork-barrel spending; and ever more obsequiousness to rapacious special interests."

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has begun airing a television ad that attacks Jeanne Shaheen's record as governor; an ad the Shaheen campaign calls an "outright lie."

"As governor Jeanne Shaheen increased spending by a billion dollars, signed the first statewide property tax, and even agreed to sign a state income tax," the announcer says.

In the theater of politics, expedient and easy trumps realistic and necessary. That's why no one - especially not Governor Chris Gregoire - will be advocating for a Washington income tax anytime soon.