Budget Veto
Rell vetoed the Democratic budget proposal (veto message from iBlog West Hartford at MLN):
“Instead of reducing spending as families and businesses across Connecticut have done, Senate Bill 1801 does nothing to reduce the size or cost of a government that has outgrown the taxpayers’ ability to pay for it. Rather, it pushes the pain of sacrifice off the state bureaucracy and onto the state’s taxpayers. I cannot allow that to happen. Senate Bill 1801 calls for $2.5 billion in new taxes on the people and employers of Connecticut in the midst of the greatest global economic downturn since the Great Depression: exactly the wrong move at exactly the wrong time.”
Government, of course, is not a family — it is what families count on in a time of crisis. The right time to scale back our civil services would be during a time of broadening prosperity, not at the moment when we depend on those services the most.
Rell’s cuts would sacrifice 10% of our services — and for what? The proposal she just vetoed would increase taxes by less than a percentage point for families making a million dollars a year. (A household income of $1,000,000 would see a tax increase of $9,500.) Obviously, Rell thinks the middle class can afford to suffer a little more.