Posted on May 9, 2023
Our House Republican two-year budget — unlike the Democratic proposal that came out of the Appropriations Committee recently — is balanced, and comes in below the spending cap while increasing investments in critical areas where the majority party fell short, including education and nonprofit agencies.
Most importantly, our proposal amounts to the most significant tax relief for middle class and working families in more than three decades. Overall, the tax cuts exceed $1.1 billion, from a retroactive income tax cut, to elimination of the highway use tax and a $2,000 per-child tax break for families.
This is a straightforward alternative delivered May 2, the day after the latest revenue projections were released, to both the governor’s February proposal which also includes income tax relief, and the Democratic plan that was out of balance the day it was produced last month. Now the negotiations can begin in earnest with Republicans sitting at the bargaining table with Gov. Ned Lamont and our Democrat colleagues before the legislative session wraps up June 7. The critique of our plan by the Hearst editorial pages on May 5 was both misguided and inaccurate. The editorial, at best, conjures up the notion, “damning with faint praise.”
And judging by the relatively muted criticism from the majority party to our plan, House Republicans have a viable budget framework, elements of which enjoy broad support.
But the Hearst editorial was flat out wrong when it stated “[t]o save money [t]heir big idea is let open state jobs remain that way.’’ A survey of all departments shows vacancy rates across the state workforce of up to 20 percent in some cases. But the Democrat budget pads accounts by assuming all those open jobs, along with their attendant mammoth fringe benefit costs, would be filled this July 1, the first day of the fiscal year.
First off, we can realize $200 million in savings, according to the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis, by filling the vacancies as they would naturally occur, and as needed. It is how the private sector operates every day of the business week.
Our budget does not eliminate a single state job, a critical point made repeatedly during our televised presentation to the media May 2, but one that was evidently lost on the Hearst editorialist.
Aside from the factual error regarding the vacancies, the editorial also tries to give readers the impression that Republicans have historically shirked their budget responsibilities or, at the very least, have taken a last-minute approach to the debate over fiscal policy — neither of which is accurate. Our successful efforts with the 2017 budget battle, for instance, featured mandated spending and borrowing limits, the so-called fiscal “guardrails.’’ They have allowed Connecticut to pay down debt, reduce state pension liabilities, grow a record surplus and retire the phrase “deficits as far as the eye can see,’’ uttered by “Malloyists’’ during the previous administration.
In that critical year of 2017, Republicans, by the way, produced five budgets, the Democrats, zero.
In the intervening years since 2017, Republicans were at the table debating the tax and spending plans in the Finance and Appropriations committee process. The subtle Hearst dig of the timing of our budget release, “albeit with only 32 days to go before the scheduled end of the session,” ignores reality. Our budget was released less than 24 hours after the final revenue projections were delivered. To present our plan any earlier would have been reckless.
Interesting to note: a nonpartisan survey of other states showed that 27 of 31 responding states indicated the minority party rarely, if ever, offers a competing budget.
We welcome and expect critical examinations of all our proposals because Connecticut’s residents are better served by their elected officials when that happens. The media, of course, plays a huge role in disseminating what goes on in Hartford to readers and viewers. In this case, in our opinion, the whole message was lost in translation.
Vincent J. Candelora, R-86, of North Branford is the House Republican Leader
