Though she was recently defeated in the gubernatorial election, Libertarian Carla Howell still wants to be involved in Massachusetts politics. Howell offered to help Republican Governor-Elect Mitt Romney uncover billions of dollars in Massachusetts government overspending, free of charge.
‘Although Mitt Romney opposed my Ballot Question 1 to end the income tax in Massachusetts, I will put aside our differences to help the governor-elect cut state government spending by at least $2 billion,’ Howell said. ‘I am doing this to help reduce the back-breaking tax burden on Massachusetts workers.’
Howell was the author and spokeswoman of the income tax ballot question, which lost by a small margin. The question was a citizen petition initiative that proposed repealing all Massachusetts state taxes on personal income wages, passive income and capital gains.
Though Howell and her question failed, she vowed to continue working to ‘shrink government spending.’ Her goals by offering her expertise to Romney include demonstrating to the taxpayer that the government in fact is wasting $9 billion, not just the $2 billion she plans on identifying, she said.
Welfare programs and subsidies such as Medicaid are overpriced and unnecessary, Howell said. Healthy families are paying $10,000 a year for insurance out of their own pockets, she said. While Medicaid is the only choice for them, she argued it is also overpriced.
Not only does big government central planning affect the price of health care, she added, but also of education, housing and business regulation.
‘All we need to do is remove the projects that drive up the cost,’ she explained.
‘If given a chance, if Romney opens up the books as he should anyway I can find $9 billion of waste,’ Howell promised. Because she is neither Democrat nor Republican, Howell claimed she can offer a truly non-partisan spending investigation and analysis.
Pointing out her degree in math, her MBA and her business and cost-cutting experience, Howell said, ‘I can root out waste, spending that does not accomplish its objective and programs that cause more harm than good.’
However, while the Romney campaign said it appreciates Howell’s offer, it has not made any personnel decisions at this point.
‘We appreciate Carla Howell and the offering of her services among the others who have also proposed to help,’ said Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman. ‘We have received over 2,300 resumes from people with advanced educational degrees.’
At the moment, Fehrnstrom said, Romney’s office is focused on going through those thousands of applications and assembling a group of possible candidates, which he said was a big and time-consuming task.
‘I am sure that Carla Howell has a lot to offer, which is not unlike the thousands of other proposals that Mitt has received,’ Fehrnstrom said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
