Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

Politic is a lose, lose proposition, no matter what you do you lose and that is especially true at the state level. Connecticut is caught between a rock and a hard place, it all boils down to whom do you want to squeeze, the rich, or the workers, or education, or the towns & cities?

The Republican and Democratic budgets suck!

The three proposed budgets do not balance, the Connecticut Mirror says…

Despite their many disagreements over how the next state budget should look, Republican and Democratic legislators have one key element in common
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Neither of their respective plans would spare Connecticut from grappling with another massive budget deficit two years from now.

The legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis says the two-year budget crafted by Republican legislators and passed in the House and Senate late last week would balance the state’s books this fiscal year and next — wiping out a $3.5 billion deficit in the process
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But that same plan, unless adjusted, would run $3.31 billion in the red between 2019 and 2021.

And the alternative budget developed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Democratic legislative leadership would fare even worse, with a potential shortfall of $3.58 billion.

In other words, when Connecticut’s next governor arrives at the Capitol in January 2019, that person and the General Assembly effectively would face the same challenge that has confounded Malloy and legislators for the past eight months. And that’s after taking into account the wide array of spending cuts and tax hikes both sides have built into their latest budget plans.

You just cannot balance the budget without some type on new sources of revenue.

Malloy has said he will veto the Republican plan, citing several problems. The governor says that budget would:

• Unilaterally reduce employee pension benefits after mid-2027 and reap some of the savings now, reducing pension contributions by $321 million across this fiscal year and next.
• Impose excessive cuts on public colleges and universities.
• Cut income tax relief for the working poor by $150 million.
• Provide insufficient aid to Hartford to avert insolvency.
• And require the governor to find $260 million more in undefined savings after the budget is in force than the Democratic plan would demand.

So when the Republicans say there budget doesn’t have any tax increase they are full of… well baloney. According to the Hartford Courant some of the things that the Republican budget does away with are.

While the Republicans rejected Democrats’ proposals to institute new or higher taxes on cellphone plans, Uber and Lyft rides, restaurant meals, cigarettes and vacation homes, the GOP is calling for other changes that could result in less money in people’s pockets.

For instance, proposed changes to the earned income tax credit would result in less money for the working poor. An increase in the fee for criminal background checks could cost businesses more. And the elimination of an exemption to the admissions tax at Dunkin’ Donuts Park, the XL Center and other venues would cost concert-goers and minor league baseball fans a collective $2 million in fiscal 2019 and another $2 million the following year.

The Republican plan calls for $20 million in unspecified fee increases in fiscal 2019 to cover administrative expenses. It also would generate millions by raising the state’s hospital tax in a complicated maneuver that is designed to bring in more federal funding, with the promise that some of that money would be sent back to the hospitals.

So how do you define tax increase? Me, I define it by having to pay more to the government. Increased usage fees I define as tax increases, losing earned income tax credit is a tax increase.

So where do you get new funding sources?

Personally I would like to see an increase in usage fees such as hunting & fishing licenses, professional fees and increases in cigarette and liquor taxes. I would like to see tolls (but the locations of the tolls would have to be made so it didn’t pick any locations. i.e. just at the borders), and I would like to see marijuana legalized and taxed.

I also think part of the problem is in Washington as they cut grants to states. The Republican rush to cut the taxes on millionaires and billionaires is causing federal budget deficits to increase and plus the drastic increase in military spending is going squeeze the states even more as the Congressional Republicans move to cut spending and funds to the states to pay for the tax breaks on the rich and increase in military spending.

There is not easy answer, with the move by Congress toward “state’s rights” states will be battling each other on a race to the bottom.

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Many people say that government should be run like a business.

I say it is not a business. It is a government that have certain duties and responsibilities to the people.

How do you put food assistance in a profit/loss statement? Are there certain number of acceptable deaths due to starvation?

What about budgeting for hurricane relief? Or snow removing? How do you run that like a business?

You can only make so many cuts and then people start dying. What is an acceptable ratio for the Department of Social Service case workers to clients? How about the roads, how do you put them in a profit/loss statement?

Do we want parks? What about libraries, do we need them?

Government is not a business.