“The governor is being dishonest with the people of Connecticut. She did not tell the truth about the depth of the fiscal crisis when she released her budget on Feb 4, and she has continued to ignore the truth about the deficit we face.”
–Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, on the governor’s continuing insistence that the budget deficit is far smaller than the Office of Fiscal Analysis is predicting. Rell’s administration has recently admitted that revenue projections are down by $1.4 billion, but the two sides are still frustratingly far apart on the actual size of the deficit.
Until legislative Democrats and the Rell administration can agree on a set of numbers, no progress can be made on budget negotiations. So much for getting it done early, I’m guessing.
he’s right! that guy is right! grammy rell is downsizing the deficit because she’s trying to keep us from enacting the tax increases she knows we need. you can’t close a deficit this big without tax increases, big ones! start with the rich!
Colin Mcenroe wrote:
http://blogs.courant.com/colin_mcenroe_to_wit/2009/03/dumb-and-dumber-1.html
Ok. Wrong chamber, I know. But the MJI published this story at 11:56am on a Friday.
Is the intention to avoid news coverage / publicity?
GC… maybe your quote should have been:
Seriously though, was there a reason for saying this today instead of waiting for Monday? Makes no sense to me.
On Thursday, Finance committee will vote on new high income tax rate of 9.4% (now 5%) and increase sales tax to 7.5% from current 6%.
Where are the spending cuts???
Nada.
Where is the $220 million to mitigate this year’s deficit?
Nada.
Where’s the leadership in the General Assembly?
Nada.
Wouldn’t a 9.4% tax rate be one of the nation’s highest? I presume this doesn’t have any chance of passing? I haven’t seen anything about this.
Almost doubling the state’s income tax rate would be devestating for growth.
This is the same useless blather we have gotten out of Don Williams for three months. He repeatedly criticizes the governor for not evaluating the deficit to be as large as his legislative office does, but he has done NOTHING over the past three months to close the gap.
What they HAVE done, or at least been trying to do, is set the stage for a massive tax increase. That is what their lamely assembled fake cuts Appropriations budget was done for… to try to scare people into rolling over for a tax increase.
And soon, you will see this massive increase…
gmr,
“Almost doubling the state’s income tax rate would be devestating for growth.”
In the private sector yes, you are 100% correct, it clearly would be. But why get worked up over this?
Donovan and Williams can act dumb all they want, which as each day that goes by seems less and less like an act, but the bottom line is still this: We can no more just tax our way out of this, than we can just cut our way out.
Along with some reasonable tax increase there will need to be real reduction in state spending. At this point that can really only mean we need the “fixed costs” unfixed, and in very real terms, reduced. You can’t get this done any other way.
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never
let
a
crisis
go
to
waste