Romney's Massachusetts Budget

Per Wikipedia having vowed not to raise taxes Romney on announcing his 2004 budget proposal said by reorganizing the state bureaucracy along with reducing waste and fraud he would save $2 billion. Democratic legislators and independent analysts called that estimate vastly overdrawn and the Massachusetts (MA) Taxpayer Foundation, a nonpartisan business-funded organization that monitors state finances, suggested the figure might be closer to $100 million; Romney eventually conceded that the figure could not be reached without new revenue. MA had enacted a tax increase prior to Romney taking office (which he opposed during his campaign) that reduced the deficit, projected to be $3 billion, by $1.3 billion. Romney required state workers to make larger contributions toward health insurance, consolidated agencies of the state executive branch (such as Health & Human Services)–cut workers by 40% (2,000) down to 3,000 workers, raised fees and changed the business tax code to prevent businesses from evading payment of taxes; businesses called the changes tax increases but Romney defended them as the elimination of “loopholes.” Examples of these changes included blocking corporations from transferring intellectual property assets to shell companies in states with lower corporate tax rates, preventing banks and some corporations from avoiding taxes through paper restructurings, eliminating tax breaks for direct mail advertising and taxing sales of software downloaded over the internet (which was untaxed) at the same rate as identical software purchased in stores. The Romney administration sought an exemption to avoid having to comply with a federal law passed in 2004 that mandated that states lower their corporate tax rates. Romney's business tax "loophole closures" brought in $350–375 million per year. Unanticipated federal funds reduced the budget gap further and in combination with funding cuts, fee increases, collection of more business tax revenue, and reliance on funds in the state's ‘rainy day fund’ (known as the Stabilization Fund) Romney and the legislature were able to balance the 2004 budget. Romney declared "We have successfully closed the largest deficit in our state's history without raising taxes." Some called the statement dishonest citing the large increases in fees and business tax revenues as well as the increases in fees and taxes levied by local governments in response to Romney's policies. Upon leaving office in January 2007 Romney argued that he had left the state with a large budget surplus, after he cut hundreds of millions of dollars of programs. While campaigning for the presidency Romney said "we didn’t just slow the rate of growth of our government, we actually cut it."  However, upon taking office, successor Governor Deval Patrick said there would be a $1 billion deficit for fiscal 2008 if existing service levels were carried over into the next year's budget.  

Romney’s campaign makes the same promises he made to MA and he touts his success as Governor for the reason we should elect him president. Take a good look. He wants to send programs back to the states-as governor he tried to outsource jobs (like at Bain). Taxes went up higher than the national average (the details will follow). He used MA’s rainy day fund (like Social Security and Medicare) and received funds from the federal government to balance his budget.