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Massachusetts state lawmakers are working on yet another bloated budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2026.
With more than $61.5 billion in the proposed House budget and many non-monetary provisions, Massachusetts legislators do not seem interested in embracing fiscal responsibility anytime soon.
The House budget has 1,650 proposed amendments. Here are five of the worst pieces of pork:
1. Flowers For Lowell
Amendment 233, filed by state Representative Tara Hong (D-Lowell) provides $100,000 for "Beautifying the Entrance Ways into the City of Lowell."
The provision aims to "enhance Lowell’s entranceways with public art, landscaping, and flowers."
Why can't Lowell pay for its own flowers and wasteful public art? Why should taxpayers across the state pay for something that doesn't improve public safety, education, combat the opioid epidemic -- or even do anything meaningful for the local economy?
Lowell has an especially bad fentanyl problem compared to the rest of the country, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Flowers will do nothing to solve that problem, nor will they fix any potholes.
And yet ... this isn't even close to the worst one on the list.
2. LGBT Art
Given the immense problems the world faces, more government expenditures on art feel myopic and out-of-touch.
When there's homeless people on the streets, food insecurity, and a mental health crisis, only the immensely privileged would think to waste more money on subsidizing private sector artwork.
State Representative Kate Hogan (D-Stow) put Amendment 1625 in the budget which provides $85,000 for the Boston LGBTQIA+ Museum to create an "artist support program."
Maybe it’s time to let the private market decide the value of LGBT-themed art — rather than forcing taxpayers to fund projects that push woke gender ideology, sow confusion, and celebrate behaviors tied to serious public health risks like HIV and monkeypox.
Public money shouldn’t support the claim that people are born in the wrong body or that happiness requires irreversible medical procedures — especially at the expense of social cohesion and mental health.
Nor should we subsidize woke art installations that alienate most Americans while underreacting to real crises like addiction, poverty, and untreated mental illness.
Culture should reflect truth and beauty — not ideology, and definitely not on the public dime.
3. Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood already gets plenty of government money in Massachusetts from Medicaid reimbursements.
But state Representative Dawne Shand (D-Newburyport) filed Amendment 263 to give America's largest abortion provider $2.5 million to "support continuing access to sexual and reproductive health care and community needs."
Planned Parenthood kills babies, lobbies for no limits on abortion, and pushes transgenderism on minors. Also, its Get Real sex ed workbooks teaches kids about oral and anal sex, including mouth-to-anus contact -- physically dangerous, emotionally harmful, and spiritually destructive behavior.
In terms of real-life villains, Planned Parenthood isn't just on the list -- it's near the top.
Our state already funds abortion. Why not use the budget to find more ways to help pregnant women who actually want to have children?
4. The Busing Bus
State Representative Christopher Worell (D-Dorchester) filed Amendment 962 because he wants to pay homage to busing.
The amendment will give $100,000 to Massachusetts Action for Justice to buy a bus so it can create the Boston Desegregation Mobile Museum, focused on busing in Boston.
Let's be honest: busing in Boston was horrible.
It forced little kids to travel to the other side of a massive city to go to lousy public schools in dangerous and unfamiliar neighborhoods for the sake of so-called racial equity.
It took kids from neighborhoods with bad public schools in Roslindale and South Boston and shuffled them around. (Excel High, formerly South Boston High, is such a good school that it's closing.) It wasn't a serious way to fix public education, but it was the perfect way to make people hate each other -- especially when a black teenager nearly killed a white teenager with a knife at South Boston High School.
Yeah, let's pay homage to that and pretend Boston was segregated because people went to their neighborhood schools -- which is what liberals support now because they oppose school choice (for everyone except the METCO students, a program that effectively excludes low-income white students stuck in lousy school districts).
Here's a better idea for that money that would improve public education: a targeted school private voucher program for low-income students of all races. Private schools often cost less per pupil than public schools and get better results, especially parochial schools.
5. Asian American Women's Political Initiative
State Representative Tram Nguyen (D-Andover) filed Amendment 1063 to provide the Asian American Women's Political Initiative with $100,000 for its "programming needs."
We shouldn't fund exclusionary private organizations, limited to people of one race and so-called gender identity. We especially shouldn't do that when it's a woke liberal organization.
The organization in question not only advocates for abortion and transgenderism, but it also supports using racial discrimination in college admissions -- which disproportionately hurts Asian students in admissions at elite colleges, even more so than whites.
"As AAPI women fighting for racial justice, we REFUSE to be exploited for our AAPI identities and used as a wedge to take down affirmative action," the organization said in a June 2023 Facebook post. "We will keep fighting for a multiracial democracy and a future our communities deserve."
Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to bankroll an activist group that claims to represent Asian Americans while openly supporting policies that discriminate against them (and white people).