Editorial: By postponing hard choices, Beacon Hill risks greater pain

This one-time money is likely to dry up much faster than tax revenues recover; the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation is predicting a $2.5 billion shortfall in fiscal 2012. That's bad enough. But voters will likely be confronted in November with ballot initiatives to cut the state sales tax from 6.25 cents to 3 cents and to repeal the sales tax on alcohol purchases altogether. Should those measures pass, billions of dollars in expected revenues would vanish.