Fiscal Responsibility
August 8, 2007
Governor Martin O'Malley
This is Governor Martin O’Malley. In Maryland, our goals are pretty straight-forward. They are to strengthen and grow our middle class and our family-owned businesses and farms, to improve public safety and public education in every part of our State, and to expand opportunity -- the opportunity to learn, to earn, to enjoy the health of the people that we love, as well as the land and the water, the environment that we love, to more people rather than fewer.
Now, in order to make progress towards achieving those goals, we have to get our fiscal house in order, which means we have to tackle the $1.5 billion structural deficit that we’ve inherited. We can either allow ourselves to be taxed at higher rates every month by circumstance or together we can invest in solutions.
When given a choice between decline and progress, the people of Maryland always choose to make progress. Together we can overcome the deficit in our path and we can get our fiscal house in order in a way that improves our State and makes it stronger. We have already cut our State budget by $280 million. We’ve introduced initiatives like Statestat that measures the performance of our State government to make it more efficient and more effective.
Working with elected leaders in the General Assembly, we are also going to need to reform our tax system in a way that makes it more modern, more inclusive and more fair
-- especially more fair for the working families of our State who have been taking it on the chin for the last few years.
This will mean closing loopholes for big giant corporations and, yes, demanding that the wealthiest among us pay a fair share.
Getting our State’s fiscal house in order is not an end, it is a means to achieve bigger and more important goals, like strengthening and growing our middle class, improving public safety and public education, and the affordability of college, so that we can also expand opportunity for the working people of our State.
It’s something we must overcome in order to achieve our shared goals and to build a stronger and better Maryland for the working people of Maryland.
