Tax committee chair calls for taxing wealthy to address revenue shortfall

Sarah Austin, a policy analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy who also took part in the discussion, pointed out that “over the next three years, the state is facing $1.4 billion in revenue shortfall.”

“One out of every ten dollars that the state thought was going to be there isn’t going to be there anymore,” Austin said. “When you think about the fact that education and health and human services together is 80 percent of the budget, when you are looking at a ten percent decline or more than that in revenue, you are really going to be scrambling to find ways to cut the budget in that environment that isn’t going to have massive implications for working class people’s ability to get by and do well.”

Click here to read the full story, first published August 14, 2020, in Beacon.