Vote Math
So we got a budget from the State Senate today: highlights include a progressive income tax up to 7.5% for annual incomes over $750,000, a temporary hike in the estate tax, no reduction in the $500 property tax credit, and about a billion dollars in cuts. The Senate Dems have a reasonable presentation assembled here, with pie charts to compare this budget plan to previous “crisis budgets” here. The odds of the pie charts appearing in the news tomorrow morning are pretty slim.
I have more to say about the budget, but the focus in coverage so far has been the number of Democrats that defected on the vote, taking as a foregone conclusion that Rell will issue a veto of the plan.
But a 19-16 vote doesn’t bother me in the least: I mean, I don’t enjoy that Duff and Meyer seem to be re-branding themselves this year as “conservative Democrats,” but the closeness of the vote is a sign that there weren’t any more deals made than necessary to pass the bill through.
A 24-11 budget is not going to be pretty — some of the quotes seem to suggest that the holdouts believe $400,000+ earners need more of a break in our troubled times than those seniors and unemployed residents that are still paying their property tax bills — and the other 80% of the caucus might not be willing to give enough to buy those few renegades back into the fold. In fact, I would hope that legislators from Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport would reject any attempt to stick it to their constituents by making it clear that a proposal that moves too far away from today’s deal would lose their support. (See the excellent effort to whip Congressional progressives into insisting on their own relevance a public option in health reform as a larger-scale version of this same idea.)
If Rell issues a veto — and I’m not totally convinced she will — don’t expect major changes to attract a 24-vote majority. The ticking clock is going to be what persuades either five Senators or one Governor to come aboard, not a more-regressive tax code or sweeteners for wayward Democrats.