POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook: State budget cuts coming

 

BY LISA KASHINSKY AND KELLY GARRITY LESS MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS — Gov. Maura Healey is planning hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts, according to eight lawmakers who received calls over the weekend from members of her administration alerting them to the move. Healey is eyeing about $375 million in cuts as the state runs about $769 million behind tax revenue projections. It was not immediately clear where Healey plans to cut costs, but lawmakers are being told certain earmarks — which provide funding for nonprofits, local projects and more — are being slashed in half. The governor said just weeks ago that she was not considering cuts to the nearly $56 billion budget, telling the State House News Service in a mid-December interview — before the latest revenue report dropped — that her administration was “going to manage the situation.” Gov. Maura Healey waved off concerns about the state's finances in end-of-year interviews. | Lisa Kashinsky/POLITICO But that appears to have changed , according to the lawmakers who were granted anonymity to speak freely about the pending cuts — referred to as “9C cuts” because of the section of the law that gives the governor the authority to make them. The last 9C cuts were made by then-Gov. Charlie Baker in 2016 . Healey’s administration did not directly confirm the cuts are coming. But Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz said in a statement Sunday the governor had directed him to “evaluate any and all necessary steps” to ensure a balanced budget and that he would “provide more information in short order.” Gone are the days of soaring revenues during the pandemic that triggered $3 billion in givebacks to taxpayers. The state brought in just under $3.8 billion in December — about $82 million, or 2.1 percent, less than December 2022 and $138 million, or 3.5 percent, below benchmark, according to the latest revenue report. Collections over the first six months of the fiscal year are running ahead of the same period in fiscal 2023. But they’re about three-quarters-of-a-billion dollars, or 4.1 percent, less than the year-to-date benchmark. Revenues have now failed to hit benchmarks for six months straight. During that same time, Healey signed into law $1 billion in tax cuts and credits. She also sought $250 million in additional funds for the state's shelter system and is poised to return for more, with her administration projecting the emergency assistance program will run $224 million into the red this fiscal year. The administration wants to cover that cost — and part of the nearly $1 billion tab the shelter program is expected to run up in fiscal 2025 — with $700 million in pandemic-era surplus funds that Baker stashed in a transitional escrow account. But that idea already seems to have gotten pushback from at least one top Democratic lawmaker. “We protect our reserve funds,” Senate Ways and Means Chair Michael Rodrigues told reporters last week. GOOD MONDAY MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS. This no good, very bad Patriots season is finally, mercifully, over. We’re onto the draft — and maybe the post-Belichick era?! Not everyone wants Bill Belichick gone, apparently. | Steven Senne/AP TODAY — Healey has no public events. Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll attends the inaugurations of Quincy Mayor Tom Koch at 10 a.m. and Melrose Mayor Jennifer Grigoraitis at 7:30 p.m. House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and Auditor Diana DiZoglio also attend Grigoraitis’ inaugural. Tips? Scoops? Know of any budget earmarks getting cut? Email us: lkashinsky@politico.com and kgarrity@politico.com . DATELINE BEACON HILL DEPARTURE LOUNGE — Another lawmaker is leaving for the Healey administration. State Rep. Josh Cutler, the House chair of the labor and workforce committee, will be the governor’s undersecretary of apprenticeship, work-based learning and policy. House Speaker Ron Mariano has yet to call a special election to fill Cutler’s seat. But Ken Sweezey , a Hanson Republican who challenged Cutler in 2022, is already jumping in the race. “The 6th Plymouth was a historically Republican district prior to the last decade. This is the year we can return to that legacy,” Sweezey said in a statement announcing his bid. FROM THE HUB — “21 North End restaurants accuse Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu of discrimination in new lawsuit,” by Phil Tenser, WCVB: “ The 163-page federal lawsuit, in which the North End Chamber of Commerce joined with 21 restaurants, asks the court to end the city's ban on outdoor dining in the busy neighborhood. It also seeks financial compensation, including a refund of fees charged under a previous edition of the program that allowed outdoor dining in the North End if restaurants paid $7,500 to participate.” LYNCH BUCKS BRIDGE PLAN — Rep. Stephen Lynch doesn’t appear to be on board with Boston’s plan to rebuild the Long Island bridge and reopen recovery services there, saying that “warehousing people on an island ... [is] not ideal.” He suggested during an interview on NBC10 Boston’s “At Issue” that the money it would take to rebuild the bridge would be better spent on “redo[ing] a major hospital." FROM HARVARD YARD ‘HOW HARVARD’S BOARD BROKE UP WITH CLAUDINE GAY’ — The New York Times’ Maureen Farrell and Rob Copeland share a stunning account of how Harvard Corporation members’ support for Claudine Gay crumbled after initially backing her to stay on as president — and how Gay knew her tenure was over days before she formally resigned on Jan. 2. Top Massachusetts Democrats who have passed through Harvard’s hallowed halls were silent in the immediate aftermath of Gay’s announcement that she would step down. But they’re starting to speak now. Gay “made mistakes,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on WCVB’s “On the Record.” But even as the former Harvard Law professor said she disagreed with what Gay said about genocide, she blamed “billionaires and the right-wing extremists” who don’t “care about our academic institutions and how to make them stronger,” or about antisemitism, for driving Gay’s downfall . — “Harvard professors aghast that Claudine Gay resigned without transparent review of plagiarism accusations,” by Hilary Burns and Mike Damiano, The Boston Globe. — “Corporate compensation for Harvard’s new interim president stands out among Ivy League peers,” by Elizabeth Koh, The Boston Globe. FROM THE DELEGATION LET’S MAKE A DEAL — Congressional leaders have struck a deal on government spending levels that could avert a partial government shutdown in less than two weeks, though it still has quite a ways to go. Also possible this week: a border and immigration deal that could unlock more aid for Israel and Ukraine. But it’s unclear if the money the Biden administration is seeking — and that Gov. Maura Healey really wants — for shelter and services for migrants will make it in, our colleague Burgess Everett reports . “Everyone realizes that we need to take action on Israel, we need to take action on Ukraine and we need to do something on the border. It’s become out of control. We’ve lost control of the border,” Lynch said on NBC10, sounding optimism that a deal could clear both chambers — depending on what’s in it. But Warren sounded less optimistic on WCVB: “There’s always progress, but none of this counts until you make it across the finish line.” WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD BE READING — “Winter weather in Massachusetts sparks concerns for unaccompanied homeless adults,” by Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald: “Cold weather arrives as one provider told the Herald that they have seen more unaccompanied, unhoused adults seeking shelter compared to last year. It comes at a time when most of state government is focused on housing migrants arriving in Massachusetts.” — “Northampton makes case for joining fossil-fuel free pilot,” by Alexander MacDougall, Daily Hampshire Gazette: “The pilot program, established by the state’s Department of Energy Resources (DOER), late last month officially accepted seven municipalities into its program: Acton, Aquinnah, Brookline, Cambridge, Concord, Lincoln and Lexington. … Newton and Arlington, were also accepted on a conditional basis. … With West Tisbury’s withdrawal, only nine of the 10 available slots for the program are filled, and Northampton is one of two substitute candidates hoping to occupy the last slot. The other candidate is the city of Somerville.” FOLLOW YOUR OWN RULES — The New England First Amendment Coalition is calling out the Massachusetts Trial Court system for not posting online all of the information about criminal cases that’s required by law, the Boston Herald’s Flint McColgan writes. 2024 WATCH BALLOT BATTLE — The state's Ballot Law Commission is mulling whether to take up a challenge seeking to bar former President Donald Trump from the ballot under the so-called insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. Shannon Liss-Riordan is helping spearhead the challenge . But Warren, who backed Liss-Riordan for attorney general in 2022, said on WCVB that while it's "pretty clear that Donald Trump participated in an insurrection" she'd rather "see this resolved at the ballot box, because I don't want there to be any question about the legitimacy of it." GRANITE STATE OF MIND — Liz Cheney is urging New Hampshire voters to reject Trump at the ballot box in just over two weeks. The former Wyoming congresswoman and vocal opponent of Trump continues to flirt with a third-party presidential bid as she looks for ways to block him from returning to the White House. NOT QUITE BUSINESS AS USUAL — The Democratic National Committee scolded New Hampshire Democrats for holding delegate-selection caucuses on Saturday for the state’s “meaningless” unsanctioned presidential primary, we scooped, as the fallout from Democrats’ inability to agree on a nominating calendar this cycle continues. But New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley brushed the criticism aside, saying it’s “nothing new” and “we persist.” Healey, a Biden surrogate, appeared at caucuses for Biden delegates in Manchester and Concord to promote his allies’ effort to write him in on the Democratic primary ballot after the president passed on participating in the contest over the calendar spat. It is “imperative that we do everything that we can to have the strongest showing for Joe Biden on Jan. 23, to send a signal not just to the great people of New Hampshire but to the people across this country about what needs to happen,” Healey said in Manchester (h/t ABC News' Kelsey Walsh ) . MEANWHILE, IN PENNSYLVANIA — Attorney General Andrea Campbell attended Biden’s speech marking the anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, in which he cast Trump as a threat to democracy. Campbell said in a statement: “I do not want to wake up on Wednesday, November 6, 2024 to a world in which Massachusetts must jump into action to protect our residents from a new radical, extremist administration." More from Mass. lawmakers on the anniversary. CHRISTIE’S CONTRAST — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has spent months accusing former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley of changing her message based on her audience, as her rise in New Hampshire diminishes his chances in the state in which he’s staking his campaign. Now he’s taking that argument to the airwaves in a new ad , part of his seven-figure pre-primary advertising push. MEANWHILE, IN MAINE — Christie won’t be on the ballot in Maine after he declined to appeal a court’s ruling that he didn’t submit enough signatures, per the Portland Press Herald . HEARD ‘ROUND THE BUBBLAH CONGRATS — to Dorchester's own Ayo Edebiri on her Golden Globes win . TRANSITIONS — Amelia Aubourg is now chief communications officer for MassDOT. — Caitlin Golden is now chief policy and strategy officer for the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance. — Kathleen Patrón is now chief of staff to state Sen. Julian Cyr. His former chief of staff, Liz Ganz , is now VP for government affairs and public policy at the Association for Behavioral Healthcare. HAPPY BIRTHDAY — to Alexis Orzeck . Happy belated to Sandy Lish of The Castle Group, who celebrated Sunday. Want to make an impact? POLITICO Massachusetts has a variety of solutions available for partners looking to reach and activate the most influential people in the Bay State. Have a petition you want signed? A cause you’re promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness among this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: jshapiro@politico.com .   Follow us on Twitter Lisa Kashinsky @lisakashinsky Kelly Garrity @KellyGarrity3   Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook  |  Playbook PM  |  California Playbook  |  Florida Playbook  |  Illinois Playbook  |  Massachusetts Playbook  |  New Jersey Playbook  |  New York Playbook  |  Ottawa Playbook  |  Brussels Playbook  |  London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters FOLLOW US

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Heather Cox Richardson

 

July 7, 2023 (Friday)

For more than a week now, I have intended to write a deep dive into the right-wing Moms for Liberty group that held their “Joyful Warriors National Summit” in Philadelphia last week, only to have one thing or another that seemed more important push it off another day. This morning it hit me that maybe that’s the story: that the reactionary right that has taken so much of our oxygen for the past year is losing ground to the country’s new forward movement.

Today the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics pushed ahead of them by showing that the U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June. The rate of job growth is slowing but still strong, although the economy showed that the Black unemployment rate, which had been at an all-time low, climbed from 4.7% to 6%. Since Black workers historically are the first to lose their jobs, this is likely a signal that the job market is cooling, which should continue to slow inflation.

In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called out the media outlets so focused on the idea that Biden would mismanage the economy and that recession was imminent that they have ignored “29 consecutive months of job growth, inflation steadily declining, durable goods having been up for three consecutive months, 35,000 new infrastructure projects, an extended period in which real wages exceeded inflation and outsize gains for lower wage-earners.” As reporters focused on the horse-race aspect of politics and how voters “felt” about issues, she noted, “[w]e have seen far too little coverage of the economic transformation in little towns, rural areas and aging metro centers brought about by new investment in plants, infrastructure projects and green energy related to the Chips Act.”

Also of note is that today is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s first day of talks with top Chinese officials in Beijing, where she will also talk to U.S. business leaders. At stake is the Biden administration’s focus on U.S. national security, which includes both limiting China’s access to U.S. technology that has military applications and bringing supply chains home. China interprets these new limitations as an attempt to hurt its economy. Yellen is in Beijing to emphasize that the U.S. hopes to maintain healthy trade with China but, she told Chinese Premier Li Qiang, “The United States will, in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security.”

Meanwhile, China’s faltering economy has led to new rules that exclude foreign companies, leading U.S. businesses to reconsider investments there. Chinese leaders have tried to reassure foreign business leaders that they are welcome in China, while Yellen told U.S business leaders: “I have made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies. We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”

The success of Biden’s policies both at home and abroad has pushed the Republican Party into an existential crisis, and that’s where Moms for Liberty fits in. Since the years of the Reagan administration, the Movement Conservatives who wanted to destroy the New Deal state recognized that the only way they could win voters to slash taxes for the wealthy and cut back popular social programs was by whipping up social issues to convince voters that Black Americans, or people of color, or feminists, wanted a handout from the government, undermining America by ushering in “socialism.” The forty years from 1981 to 2021 moved wealth upward dramatically and hollowed out the middle class, creating a disaffected population ripe for an authoritarian figure who promised to return that population to upward mobility by taking revenge on those they now saw as their enemies.

In the past two years, according to a recent working paper by economists David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, Biden’s policies have wiped out a quarter of the inequality built in the previous forty. And at the same time that Biden’s resurrection of the liberal consensus of the years from 1933 to 1980 is illustrating that the economic problems in the country were the fault of Republican policies rather than of marginalized people, the extremism of those angry Republican footsoldiers is revealing that they are not the centrist Americans they have claimed to be.

Moms for Liberty, which bills itself as a group protecting children, organized in 2021 to protest mask mandates in schools, then graduated on to crusade against the teaching of “critical race theory.” That, right there, was a giveaway because that panic was created by then-journalist Christopher Rufo, who has emerged as a leader of the U.S. attack on democracy.

Rufo embraces the illiberal democracy, or Christian democracy, of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, saying: “It’s time to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers’ unions, and overturn the school boards.” Radical right activists like Rufo believe they must capture the central institutions of the U.S. and get rid of the tenets of democracy—individual rights, academic freedom, free markets, separation of church and state, equality before the law—in order to save the country.

Because those central democratic values are taught in schools, the far right has focused on attacking schools from kindergartens to universities with the argument that they are places of “liberal indoctrination.” As a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana put on its first newspaper: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” While this quotation is often used by right-wing Christian groups to warn of what they claim liberal groups do, it is attributed to German dictator Adolf Hitler. Using it boomeranged on the Moms for Liberty group not least because it coincided with the popular “Shiny Happy People” documentary about the far-right religious Duggar family that showed the “grooming” and exploitation of children in that brand of evangelicalism.

Moms for Liberty have pushed for banning books that refer to any aspect of modern democracy they find objectionable, focusing primarily on those with LGBTQ+ content or embrace of minority rights. During the first half of the 2022–2023 school year, PEN America, which advocates for literature, found that 874 unique titles had been challenged, up 28% from the previous six months. The bans were mostly in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. A study by the Washington Post found that two thirds of book challenges came from individuals who filed 10 or more complaints, with the filers often affiliated with Moms for Liberty or similar groups. And in their quest to make education align with their ideology, the Moms for Liberty have joined forces with far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, sovereign citizens groups, and so on, pushing them even further to the right.

Although the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” that spreads “messages of anti-inclusion and hate,” the group appeared to offer to the Republican Party inroads into the all-important “suburban woman” vote, which party leaders interpret as white women (although in fact the 2020 census shows that suburbs are increasingly diverse—in 1990, about 20% of people living in the suburbs were people of color; in 2020 it was 45%).

When Moms for Liberty convened in Philadelphia last week, five candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, including Trump, showed up. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told them: "When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said, 'Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that's what I am."

But here’s the crisis for the Republican Party: Leaders who wanted tax cuts and cuts to social programs relied on courting voters with cultural issues, suggesting that their coalition was protecting the United States from radicalism.

But the Republican embrace of Moms for Liberty illustrates dramatically and to a wide audience how radical the party itself has become, threatening to turn away all but its extremist base. A strong majority of Americans oppose book banning: about two thirds of the general population and even 51% of Republicans oppose it, recognizing that it echoes the rise of authoritarians.

As historian Nicole Hemmer points out today for CNN, Moms for Liberty are indeed a new version of “a broader and longstanding reactionary movement centered on restoring traditional hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality” that in the U.S. included the women of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and segregationists who organized as “Restore Our Alienated Rights” (ROAR) in the 1970s. Hemmer observes: “The book bans, the curricula battles, the efforts to fire teachers and disrupt school board meetings—little here is new.”

In the past, a democratic coalition has come together to reject such extremism. If it does so again, the Republican marriage of elites to street fighters will crumble, leaving room for the country to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the government. When a similar realignment happened in the 1930s under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Republican Party had little choice but to follow.