February 13, 2013

Piscopo Op-Ed: Response to Proposed Budget

This article was archived from the previous WordPress site. Formatting and media should be close, but may not match the original post perfectly.

Governor Dannel P. Malloy presented his proposed biennial $41 billion budget to the House of Representatives and Senate in a joint convention of the State legislature last week.

With the state currently facing a $2.5 billion budget deficit, the governor is proposing a spending increase of 9.7%, or $1.8 billion over the current budget and bonding $3.1 billion over the next two years.

With these massive spending and borrowing increases, our State continues to head down the wrong path; one of accumulating and unfunded debt. “This budget lacks the meaningful reform that was promised,” said Piscopo.

After a record tax increase of $2 billion last year, Gov. Malloy stated he was not going to raise taxes. Yet the governor’s proposed budget will extend several ‘sunset’ taxes that had been scheduled to expire in order to help pay for his overall plan to increase state spending by nearly 10 percent over the next two years.

“We are spending taxpayer dollars that we do not have. This is fiscal irresponsibility at its absolute worst. After the record tax increase that the Governor put forth two years ago, he promised the people of Connecticut that he would not raise taxes again. Yet his proposed budget will do just that, and further increase the burden on the backs of the taxpayers,” said Piscopo. “The people of Connecticut deserve a better financial plan than one that spends and borrows its way to fiscal insanity.”

Other aspects of Malloy’s budget include:

Continuation of the electric generation tax, likely to result in more than $80 million passed on to families and businesses.
Avoids exceeding the Constitutional Spending Cap by moving $900 million in spending outside of the cap.
Bonds $1.5 billion in FY 14 and $1.6 billion in FY 15.
Finances $750 million to reduce the GAAP deficit and push out debt payment until 2016.
Pushes off Economic Recovery Notes payments.
Bonds Pay-As-You-Go transportation projects – $20 million a year.
Implement Tax Amnesty program for $25 million.
Eliminates $24.9 million in school transportation and adds a $5 million regionalization grant.
$47 million grant to municipalities to make them whole.

If you have any comments, questions, or concerns on this or any issue, I would like to hear from you.

Please call my office at 1-800-842-1423 or visit my website www.cthousegop.com.