The liberals in the Massachusetts legislature have little respect for their constituents’ tax dollars.
The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a pork-laden $58 billion budget last week. That budget included over 800 amendments, many of which are a great reminder of how Democrats waste your money when they’re in power.
The budget amendments weren’t merely for giving municipalities additional first responder and infrastructure funding. Many went to woke and wasteful causes.
The proposed budget contains quintessential government pork, such as $350,000 for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. It’s a private museum in one of the state’s poorest communities that honors uber-wealthy former basketball players, coaches, and executives. The museum has tens of millions in assets, and if it ever faced financial trouble, odds are it could get help from basketball fans and the people the museum honors.
Although that’s a waste of money, it’s still less harmful than many other pork amendments.
The budget would provide $2.2 million to the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition to offer more services for newly arrived migrants using the state’s emergency shelter system. Massachusetts has allocated over $1 billion in the past year for its emergency shelter system — more than three times the $325 million it initially appropriated for fiscal 2024. It has done so with the initial $325 million expenditure plus supplemental bills providing $250 million and $426 million, respectively.
It has spent that much because the state’s eligibility guidelines allow migrants from across the globe, including some illegal immigrants, to use its emergency shelter system; they get free long-term stays in hotels and motels thanks to this loophole. The shelter system is creating financial problems for the state; Massachusetts needs to spend less and limit migrant eligibility for its emergency shelter system rather than providing further incentives that make it a magnet state.
MIRA isn’t the only liberal advocacy group getting funding in this proposed budget. It also would provide $200,000 to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the LGBT Chamber of Commerce.
Like MIRA, the NAACP and LGBT Chamber of Commerce are liberal special interest groups. The government shouldn’t provide funding to organizations that advocate on behalf of some racial groups but not others, and businesses can support gay people or those who identify as transgender without the government’s help.
The budget also includes a ban on Native American mascots in Massachusetts schools. These mascots honor Native Americans. Communities overwhelmingly vote to keep their schools’ mascots whenever this issue appears as nonbinding referenda at the municipal level.
A ban from the state government also serves as an unfunded mandate, as it costs communities hundreds of thousands of dollars to change their mascots. Maybe Beacon Hill should tell each school district which teachers they should lay off to pay for it.
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There’s also no roll call on the Native American mascot ban amendment, either, meaning we’ll never know who supported this woke nonsense. That is a terrible way to govern, especially from a party that purports to care about democracy.
Constituents must demand better from their elected officials. People work too hard for their money for politicians to spend it on such nonsensical waste.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts.