Maine people believe in taking care of our neighbors, and in everyone pulling their weight. When polled, we overwhelmingly oppose measures that hurt the elderly, the disabled, or young children, or shift more costs from the very wealthiest to the middle class.

Yet this week, the Legislature will vote on a budget that flies in the face of those proud values you and I grew up with.

This budget cuts Drugs for the Elderly, which helps seniors and people with disabilities afford their prescription drugs. It eliminates health care coverage for tens of thousands of low-income working parents and young adults, increasing emergencyroom health care and decreasing prevention.

It cuts state funding for Head Start, child care subsidies, and home visitation — breaking rungs from the ladder of opportunity for hundreds of Maine’s young children. It cuts funding for family planning.

I have supported budget cuts in the past, but these extreme cuts are morally and economically misguided.

At the same time, the new Augusta is handing out major new tax breaks to the wealthy. Already, a single parent of two in a Bath apartment, working full time at minimum wage, pays nearly twice the state and local tax rate paid by a someone in a Cape Elizabeth mansion, making $1 million per year.

Even my friends who are wealthy say they’ve had enough charity, and that tax fairness would be better for the local economy.

By requiring the top 1 percent of Mainers to pay the same average rate as the rest of us, Maine would entirely erase its budget shortfalls, which were largely created by the latest tax giveaways. In times like these, we need to be strengthening our middle class, rewarding work and investing in our schools and small businesses.

We need to do what is right and what works — putting Maine values and common sense ahead of extremism and ideology.

Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, is the lead Democrat on the Joint Standing Committee on Taxation.

[email protected]