Grace Ross in MA gubernatorial debate on Fox News

On Budget & Economy: 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.

On Corporations: Focus on reducing costs for small biz, not big corporations

ROSS: I think it’s really critical that we understand that all of the tax breaks and most of the property breaks are only going to the very large corporations. Small business owners are concerned about health care costs and utility costs. We need real universal health coverage that’s going to take the health care burden off of those of us who are self-employed, off of small businesses and off of our municipalities. It’s a huge expense.

On Education: MCAS is a big part of why kids drop out of high school

ROSS: We have a generation now that might not even make it through high school. About a quarter of kids are dropping out, if you go to African American kids you get close to 50%, Latino kids we’re over 50%. The test is a big part of the problem. Obviously we need the funding for the schools. But the reality is that test is a key piece, it’s connected with the timing of when the kids started dropping out and we’ve got to pay attention.

On Education: Constitutional commitment to education--35 kids is too many

ROSS: The best measure of how a school is going to do is how much money that community has and that tells us what’s really going on is there is an economic drain going on in our schools. No teacher can teach well in a school that has 35 kids or more. So what we need to do is put money back into our schools, we have a Constitutional commitment to education in this state and I think we actually need to follow our Constitution.

On Environment: Agriculture deserves more economic development attention

ROSS: Agriculture & the fishing industry have suffered greatly and these are key elements of the industry and jobs in this state. I think that there’s no question that what we’re seeing is that those particular areas of economic development are not getting the attention that a bunch of more, citified maybe, forms of economic development have gotten attention to.

On Immigration: Illegal immigrants pay taxes like the rest of us

ROSS: In fact, immigrants who work here pay taxes here. Most of the taxes we’re all paying are property taxes and things like that, they pay all of those things. The issue is why there isn’t enough money for tuition in general. We’ve listened to all these stories, oh I’m going to cut a little bit here, or oh, we’re going to roll back the income tax. We’re blaming immigrants for state policy that’s hurt all of us.

On Immigration: Illegal immigration is only an issue because of jobs

ROSS: Well it’s funny, of course it’s about jobs. This issue never gets raised except when there aren’t enough jobs and the jobs aren’t paying enough. So what we really need to look at is what’s happened to our economy. Cities and towns are starved for money. We can’t afford our rents. Then we end up fighting about some immigrants.

On Principles & Values: Earns $30K/year; millionaires have no clue what we face

On Principles & Values: Running to rebuild democracy

ROSS: Deval keeps talking about bringing in voters who have given up. When people ask me, ‘How do you get people involved?’ one of the things is that we need to talk to real people about real issues. I’m accomplishing something different. It’s called trying to rebuild democracy. And if we can’t have a democracy for and by the people, if all we can have is a democracy for rich folks, then we don’t have a government anymore.

On Tax Reform: We don’t have enough income tax

ROSS: I support the idea that we shouldn’t be rolling back the state income tax. Our taxes have gone through the roof because we don’t have enough income tax and so the local cities and towns are raising property taxes. Those hit the rest of us. The income tax is the only thing that folks at the top actually have to pay the same amount as the folks at the bottom. Fees and property taxes tend to hit folks at the lower end more.

On Tax Reform: Tax rollback kills cities via property tax increase of 35%

ROSS: This no new tax pledge -- anybody at the state level who wants to argue that you’re not raising taxes because you’re rolling back the income tax is just not telling the truth. That’s why we’ve got property taxes at 35% or 42% above what they were before. Our cities and towns are dying, but they need increased minimum wages, help to the small businesses and things like that.

On Tax Reform: Tax rollback gives middle class $100s, but $100,000s to rich