State Rep. Themis Klarides (R-114) early Sunday voted against a two-year Democrat budget that relies on circumventing the state Constitution, shoddy revenue tricks and hundreds of millions in new debt to accommodate a nearly 10% spending increase, while imposing a 16% gas tax hike and devastating hospital cuts.
In order to skirt the Constitutional Spending Cap – which was designed as a tool to slow future spending and assuage public anger over the enactment of the state income tax in 1991 – the Democrats created an astonishing $6.3 billion exemption for federal Medicaid funding.
“This budget – if you have the nerve to call it that – is dishonest, incoherent. It tells a story of misplaced priorities, out of control spending, and an alarming desecration of the spending cap,” Klarides said. “It demonstrates the Democrats’ typical politician mindset of ‘Well if I don’t want to follow the rules, I’ll just change them’.”
“The spending cap is a rule the Democrats themselves created; they perpetually make their own rules and then break them – that’s how dysfunctional one party control has made our state.”
The budget also relies heavily on desperate revenue grabs, including the launch of a new lottery game called keno, $750 million in borrowing for cash flow, and the delay of nearly $400 million of scheduled debt payments that will cost tens of millions in interest.
“Budgeting is tough, but there’s a difference between making tough choices and making poor choices,” Klarides said. “These quick-fixes and temporary band-aids will only kick the can down the road, setting us up, as the last budget did, for another fiscal crisis in two years. We must address the large-scale structural shortfalls, and stop living from crisis to crisis.”
The package also cuts $10 million in municipal aid, shorts hospitals a half billion dollars and dumps multiple pots of specialized funding into general fund coffers.
Desperate for the numbers to add up, Democrats swept the following specialized funds:
-This year’s entire $220 million projected surplus
-$100 million in transportation-related money
-$25 million from the banking fund
-$15.5 million from the tobacco and health trust fund
The budget also extends a 20% corporate surcharge tax that businesses were told would expire, a move, which Klarides says, perpetuates our unstable business climate, prevents job creators from hiring and discourages businesses from coming to Connecticut.
Klarides, a member of the Appropriations Committee, also added it was an underhanded strategy by House Democrats – who left Republicans out of budget negotiations – to call debate on the budget at midnight, after the press went home and as people slept.
The bill passed on a party line vote of 95-48 at 5:15am. The 2013 session adjourns June 5.
