Democrats Continue Budget Farce; Sweeten Pot to Get One Senator
June 27, 2009
HARTFORD, CT – Senate and House Democrats, frantic to prove they could pass a budget before the end of the fiscal year passed a $3 billion tax increase, the largest in state history. The tax increases applied to individuals, estates plus a 30 percent surcharge on any profitable business. In one stroke, businesses in Connecticut now know what the Connecticut Democratic Party is all about – make others pay for an over-fed, underperforming government that employs workers who enjoy the best working conditions in the free world with gold-played retirement packages waiting for them in secured in that fabled lockbox.
Friday, the House Democrats passed the bill, but it will be promptly vetoed by Governor M. Jodi Rell. The Democrats, indeed everyone at the State Capitol, but the Democrats, have taken the $8 billion budget deficit seriously since the session begins in January. Gov. Rell has offered two budget proposals, and the House and Senate Republicans have done one as well. Together, the Republican proposals laid out in detail how the state of Connecticut can survive through a mixture of cuts, retirements, consolidations and borrowing – but no tax increases.
The budget passed not only raise taxes, but continues the same levels off insane spending and protection of ingrained government programs that have no useful purposes except to employ the unemployable. There is even a new $3 surcharge, tax, on the purchase of new tires. So, four new tires equal another $12 to the cause. This shouldn’t work too well for all those people who have lost their homes and now use their automobiles as their primary residence. And the budget also takes the City of Bridgeport off the hook from contributing the required amount to its pension fund. The rest of the cities and towns, Republican led and others, have to suck it up.
The Democrats, despite overwhelming, veto-proof numbers, can waste six months of everyone’s time hoping for Barack Obama to write a big check or the heavens to rain gold. Their colleagues in the public labor unions, including the incredibly ungrateful State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition SEBAC, have gone around the state telling the elderly and the poor they are going to wither on the vine if Gov. Rell has her way. Now SEBAC agreed to a labor deal which saved many of their jobs. You would think they would have better manners than that.
But nothing tops the farcical manner of the Senate Democrats who showed how desperate Senate President Don Williams, D-Brooklyn, was to get the budget passed, he added $853,000 in additional education aid for the Stamford school system to pull his main rival, State Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, on board. Without McDonald, who aspires to be the Number One Guy, the bill could have ended in a tie at 18 votes each. However, State Sen. Len Fassano, R-East Haven, was not able to vote so it didn’t matter except to point out how fractured the Senate Democrats are these days.
So, with no budget, Gov. Rell will make plans to run the state as the money comes in. Everyone will scatter for the Fourth of July and the long siege of Hartford will begin.
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Every Republican should continue to stir the pot and keeping the Democrats on the defensive and ask them a few questions:
Why will you not cut spending and agree to any economies of scales?
What programs are you prepared to live without or privatize?
Why should the people who pay most of the taxes, pay more when there have been no spending cuts?
Why has it taken you six months to pass a budget that you knew would not become law?
Why are you representing us, when you cannot act in the best interests of your constituents?
by The Connecticut Republican Party. www.CtGop.org .
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Tags: 8 Billion, Budget 2009-2010, CT Democrats, Don Williams, State of Conn
