[GPCA Updates] Green Party NYS Calls for Carbon Taxes, Tax the Rich and Wall Street

[Green Party of California Updates]

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Green Party of NYS
Media Release
_www.gpny.org_ (http://www.gpny.org/)

For Immediate Release


Green Party  Calls for Carbon Tax, Higher Taxes for the Rich and Wall 
Street, to Resolve  State Budget Crisis


The Green Party of NYS today offered a number of  alternatives to resolve 
the state's fiscal crisis, calling for a state budget  that improves the 
future of all New Yorkers, rather than reacting out of fear of  a budget 
shortfall.

The centerpiece of the Party's proposal is a carbon  tax, which is needed to 
both reduce greenhouse emissions contributing to climate  change while 
raising funds to support the quick transition to a economy that  will end 
reliance upon fossil fuels.

The Green Party also called for  increasing taxes on the wealthiest New 
Yorkers to reverse the regressive nature  of NY’s tax system; re-instituting 
the stock transfer tax which would serve to  minimize or contain Wall Street 
speculation; collecting hundreds of millions of  dollars in unclaimed 
deposits from the bottle bill; reducing health care costs  by eliminating 
the huge payments to for profit insurance companies (e.g.,  adopting a 
single payer universal health care system); and elimination of  wasteful 
corporate welfare programs such as the Empire State Program. The Greens 
called for raising various fees of corporate polluters to pay for the entire 
  cost of the state’s Superfund program to clean up abandoned toxic waste 
sites;  right now taxpayers are required to foot 50% of the cleanup bill.

“We  need to start implementing eco-taxes, so that polluters rather than 
taxpayers  pick up the various costs associated with pollution. Pollution 
results in higher  health costs to deal with health problems created (e.g., 
asthma from air  pollution, cancer, etc.) while also forcing taxpayers to 
pay for costs to clean  up toxic waste sites, contaminated water, landfills, 
etc. We need to stop  wasting tax dollars subsidizing business practices 
that are harmful to the  public health and the environment; which leave 
clean businesses at an unfair  disadvantage,” said state party co-chair 
Peter LaVenia.

The Greens said  that a carbon tax would be far more effective in reducing 
carbon emissions than  cap and trade programs, especially the limited 
Regional Greenhouse Gas  Initiative New York has joined. While the revenues 
from a carbon tax could be  used short-term to deal with the state budget 
deficit, they should be devoted to  long term support for investments in 
renewable energy, energy efficiency and  mass transit that would reduce the 
generation of carbon emissions.   Measures should also be adopted to make 
the carbon tax progressive in nature  (not an undue burden upon lower income 
people), by increasing funding for the  Home Energy Assistance Program or 
even income tax rebates for low and moderate  income families.

The Carbon Tax Center (www.carbontax.org) says that a  “federal” carbon tax 
equivalent to 10 cents a gallon of gasoline - but applied  to all fossil 
fuel burning - would bring in roughly $55 billion a year in  revenue. A 
similar tax in New York would probably bring in about one-fifteenth  to 
one-twentieth of such revenue.  The Carbon Tax Center suggests raising  the 
tax each year for ten years by an annual equivalence of 10 cents, raising an 
  additional $50 billion per year nationally. The tax would be levied in the 
  wholesale branch of the fuel supply chain, as far upstream as practicable. 
For  example, electric generators will pay the mandated carbon tax to their 
coal, oil  or natural gas suppliers, who will forward the payment to the 
government.

Regarding the stock transfer tax, the Green Party called upon  state 
lawmakers to collect the $9 billion it could annually get from that tax on 
speculation. “Governor Paterson keeps on talking about the need to protect 
Wall  Street. What we need to do is to protect average New Yorkers who are 
losing  their homes, jobs and life savings from the robber barons on Wall 
Street. The  stock transfer tax doesn’t have any impact on those who make 
long term  investments. What it would do is serve as an anti-speculation 
tax, primarily  impacting upon those who treat Wall Street as a casino, 
gambling all day long on  one trade after another on which way the stock 
market is headed,.” said Gloria  Mattera former Party Chairperson.

The Green Party said that enacting a  single payer universal health care 
system could also save taxpayers tens of  billions of dollars annually while 
making New York an economic magnet for  businesses. Health care, under the 
current privatized system, is by far the  biggest portion of the state 
budget, costing $50 billion annually with tens of  billions of additional 
payments being made by consumers, local governments and  employers. More 
than 16% of the American economy is now devoted to pay for  health care, far 
more than other industrial countries even though the American  health care 
system is consistently ranked among the worst of the industrial  nations 
while leaving more than 2.5 million New Yorkers uninsured.

“It is  economic suicide for America to keep on wasting as much as a third 
of our health  care budget on a system of private for profit health 
insurance that provides  nothing of value. If New York was the first state 
in America to have a rational  single payer health care system that covered 
everyone while lowering costs,  employers would flock here to lower their 
costs. The huge health care costs for  the automobile insurance companies is 
one of the major reasons they are in such  bad financial shape. Everyone who 
studies the health care system knows that a  single payer Medicare for All 
type health care system makes the most sense in  terms of quality, 100% 
coverage and lowering costs but politicians unfortunately  are bought out by 
the campaign contributions by insurance and drug companies.  Its time to 
just say no to for profit health insurance,” said Eric Jones,  co-chair of 
the Green Party of NYS.

The Green Party noted that the  poorest New Yorkers now pay twice the 
percentage of their income in state and  local taxes as wealthy New Yorkers 
like Donald Trump do. The tax cuts given to  the wealthy over the last two 
decades now costs the state more than $16 billion  annually in lost 
revenues, more than the projected state budget deficit. If the  state went 
back to the tax system it had thirty years ago, with tax brackets  adjusted 
for inflation, 95% of New Yorkers would get a tax cut – while the state 
would generate more than $8 billion in additional revenues. The Greens said 
the  state should also stop giving tax breaks to multistate companies that 
put local  businesses at a competitive disadvantage.