Thursday, February 12, 2026
Chair Madaro, Chair Eldridge, and Members of the Joint Committee on Revenue:
My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director at Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group fighting for a more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic commonwealth.
Since taking office just over a year ago, the Trump administration, along with the Republican Congress, have been hard at work to redistribute wealth in this country upwards and to take an axe to government services. They have been clear that their agenda is to make government work worse for everyday people: less responsive, less knowledgeable, less efficient.
The regressive corporate tax cuts in the “Big Ugly Bill” were central to that agenda: they exist to increase the economic and political power of the rich and to force cuts to essential services that we all rely on.
Last summer, our Congressional delegation was united in voting NO on that bill. We should send a clear NO to allowing the tax changes from it to be automatically written into our tax code.
The Governor’s proposal to protect Massachusetts from the massive budget impact of the Trump corporate tax cuts this fiscal year is important, but it’s not enough: we shouldn’t adopt these Trump’s regressive corporate tax breaks at all.
Permanently preventing state-level adoption of the Trump corporate tax cuts would preserve $463 million in state revenue in this year’s budget alone and an additional $990 million over the next five years. That is money that can be invested in health care, in education, in food assistance, in transportation, and in so much more, at a time when the federal government is no longer a partner but often an active saboteur.
We don’t need to bribe corporations by throwing money at them for research investments they made years ago in other states. Our investments in our Commonwealth are what make it a good place to do business. The idea that we would spend vital resources on such corporate handouts when our state remains one of the most unequal is galling.
When we fight to do big things in the Commonwealth, we so often hear that “we don’t have the money.” That same line is rarely invoked when it comes to corporate handouts. But let me be clear: we don’t have the money to do this right now given looming federal cuts.
Other states across the country have already taken action. Let’s not wait too long to join them.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts
