Testimony on HB1300/SB1000
By Steuart Pittman
I support the recommendations of the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education, and I support this bill.
Teachers in my county are struggling. They know exactly what’s wrong in their schools, and they know that the recommendations of this commission are spot on.
My sister is one of them. She teaches history to 180 high school students, a large percentage of whom grew up in Annapolis public housing.
They are smart kids. They have potential. She doesn’t want to lose any more of them to trauma and violence. Neither do I.
Maryland has the highest average household income and more millionaires per capita than any other state in America.
But we have more poverty than 29 states, and in the neighborhoods where that poverty is concentrated our kids are not getting the education they need.
In my county the percentage of school-age kids living in poverty has risen from 8% to 10% in just three years. That happened while wealth at the top was growing.
When I meet later this week with our bond rating agencies I will tell them that the greatest threat to the long-term fiscal health of our county is inter-generational poverty.
The only solution I know is the best economic development tool we have: education.
Four years ago, the Governor and the General Assembly brought the best minds in our state together to travel the world and make us a plan for our future.
The American system of education was once the best in the world, and the bill before you is an opportunity to reclaim that position.
Our Governor calls what we are seeking to implement the “Kirwan Tax Hike Commission.”
He gathered together his largest political donors, the ones who could afford tables for $25,000 a piece, and held a fundraiser at Live! Casino for the stated purpose of financing a media campaign to convince Marylanders that we can’t afford to implement this plan.
I’m not sure what they are worried about? Nobody is proposing tax increases on the average Marylander.
Maybe they think we’ll go after the windfall they got from the President’s celebrated tax cut, the one that cut corporate rates 30% and benefitted only the highest earners.
Maybe we should do that at some point. We certainly shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it.
The tax rate for the top bracket in America is now half of the lowest level that it was during the 48-year period in our history when we built our infrastructure, created a middle class, saved the world from fascism, and managed to pay our national bills.
We are once again at a time when we must invest.
We cannot. We must not, let the very people whose massive wealth was accumulated on the foundation built by our grandparents investments, tell us that we as a state can’t afford to improve our public schools.
This is not easy. We are up against a well-funded campaign of misinformation telling our constituents that each of them will be hit with a $6,000 tax increase.
That’s politics. It simply means we will have to set the record straight, over and over and over again.
I look forward to working with Speaker Jones, President Ferguson, and everyone who votes in support of this legislation to do just that, for our kids and for the economy of our state.