MA gubernatorial debate on Fox News: on Budget & Economy

Deval Patrick: Focus on stimulating economic growth via local aid

Grace Ross: Shift $3B in more taxes on very rich by flattening tax rates

ROSS: Well, it’s very straightforward. If you add together all the many taxes that everyone’s been talking about and you look at who pays those taxes it turns out that the folks at the bottom pay about twice out of every dollar what the folks at the top do. So if we had a system that was even flat, not just for income tax but for all taxes, we would have about $3 billion more, mostly coming from the folks at the very top. So that’s $3 billion more in a $22 billion budget. Then if we look at an issue like we spend about a billion dollars a year on sweetheart siting deals for big corporations--we have a very uneven system. That’s a billion more dollars in our budget, combine reporting for corporations, which requires them to actually pay for the business they do in Massachusetts, we get almost $5 billion back with all of those.

Kerry Healey: Focus on local aid and mobilizing people to call for it

MIHOS: But you can’t get it done. You’ve been trying. You won’t work with them, you vilify them each and every day.

HEALEY: The people who are watching here tonight can mobilize and get that done. When people are educated they will pick up their phone and call up their legislator and demand what is theirs and they deserve the rollback.

ROSS: Your office had the capacity to veto any piece of the budget that you wanted to veto and I don’t see the billion dollars that you’re talking about.

HEALEY: They had the capacity to override it. It’s 77% Democrats.