I’ve spent my entire life fighting for working families, eighteen of those years spent in a pair of work boots as an Ironworker. And I’m proud to say that when I was elected to Congress, I never left my working class values behind. I know that families in our district are struggling. People tell me every day that they are working more, and receiving less. Wages are stagnant, costs are rising and Covid-19 has revealed to many what we already knew – people are just barely hanging on.
We need a balanced, long-term plan for deficit reduction. There is no doubt that government spending is on an unsustainable path, but we need to address this problem in a way that still allows us to invest in the kinds of programs on which working families rely, while cutting out the special deals to the Washington insiders. To do this, we need a combination of revenues from closing tax loopholes and increased targeted spending reductions. We need to be cutting the budget with a scalpel—not an axe.
Across-the-board cuts, known in Washington as “sequestration,” are a bad idea that will hurt families, small businesses, and critical programs and research projects here in Massachusetts. Sequestration will kill as many as 60,000 jobs in the Commonwealth alone. These indiscriminate cuts are exactly the kind of short term, unbalanced approach to deficit reduction that I oppose, and I’ll do everything in my power to prevent them.
In the Senate, I’ll take a responsible approach to trimming our budget, an approach that brings down our deficit over time while strengthening investment in the programs that help working families get ahead.