Green Party of NYS Slams Cuomo's Tax Cut for the Rich

The Green Party of NY State slammed Gov. Cuomo and the State Legislature’s proposed tax bracket reshuffling as a major tax giveaway to the wealthiest New Yorkers.
The Green Party also called for seizing the assets of the “too big to fail” banks, breaking them up, and turning them into state and community owned banks oriented towards developing the economy for the public good.

“Cuomo’s plan is once-again a tax giveaway to his friends on Wall St. and in the 1% who donate to Democratic and Republican party campaigns.” said state party co-chair Howie Hawkins. ”Gov. Cuomo should explain why his regressive tax reform, which cuts taxes for the wealthiest should be adopted when it will actually cause a a multi-billion dollar budget deficit.  Last year I ran on a platform of raising personal income tax rates to the progressive rates of the 1970s and collecting the stock transfer tax, and using that money to and provide full employment through a Green New Deal. It’s time to make the Wall St. criminals and the wealthy pay for the mess they created. If we followed the Green Party plan, we’d raise nearly $8 billion yearly from income taxes while cutting what most people pay, and collecting the $15 billion we get from the stock transfer tax would go a long way towards making Wall St. clean up the mess they created.
State party co-chair Howie Hawkins pointed out that a family making:

• $50,000 a year will get less than $200 a year in tax cuts
• $100,000 a year gets less than $400 a year in tax cuts (~ $1 per day)
• $1,000,000 a year gets more than $20,000 a year in tax cuts, or $408 PER WEEK
• $1.99 million a year gets more than $40,000 a year in tax cuts

“Wall Street got us into this mess, and they’ve proven that they can’t be trusted to get us out.  It’s time for new solutions.  Occupy Wall St. has begun to show us what a grassroots, democratically run society could look like – one that doesn’t include the exploitation of capitalism or politics dominated by the elite.  It’s time to seize the “too big to fail” banks and turn them into a public good – a public utility - by transforming them into state and community, cooperatively-owned banks that can help finance our economic recovery and growth from the bottom up, instead of demanding austerity and tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.  Wall St. and the financial industry wouldn’t be able to openly bribe officials with campaign contributions anymore.  It would be a win-win for New York’s economy and politics.  It’s abundantly clear, however, that Cuomo and the Legislature will never change – it’s time for us to Occupy New York State politics, and the Green Party is here to do just that, “stated state party co-chair Peter LaVenia.