Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Mass, said the group was “glad to see that Governor Healey is finally being more vocal about ICE’s abuses.”
“However, it is disappointing to see that she still refuses to terminate the only existing 287(g) collaboration agreement in the state,” he added. “This agreement uses our state employees to do ICE’s work. It is unconscionable to think that Massachusetts is doing anything to make ICE’s work easier when they are acting like a rogue agency of death squads.”
Trump’s corporate tax cuts are going to cost Massachusetts nearly half a billion dollars this year alone — on top of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other federal programs we rely on.
Here’s why: States use the federal tax code as a starting point to calculate how much people and corporations owe in taxes. Trump’s changes to the federal tax code cut taxes for the rich and large corporations. So, unless we act now, these cuts will be baked into our state’s tax code, meaning big tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.
Gov. Healey recently introduced a bill that starts to address the problem. But there’s a catch: although her bill would defer these regressive corporate tax handouts for this budget cycle, it leaves them in place for future ones. Regressive corporate tax cuts are bad this year, and they will still be bad next year.
As we already face a budget crisis due to Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, we can’t afford even more cuts to health care, food assistance, education, and other essential public services.
States like California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the District of Columbia, have already taken action to address this problem. Massachusetts should join them.
