Budget can be balanced without raising taxes

In an effort to fuel stalled budget negotiations, my House and Senate Republican colleagues and I offered our third No Tax Increase budget to solve the state’s fiscal crisis through governmental consolidations and spending cuts, but we do not cut aid to towns and cities.

Republicans, using revised budget revenue estimates that required additional adjustments, again demonstrated that the state can balance its budget with no tax increases. Democrats want to raise taxes by a whopping $1.8 billion on businesses and workers with no tax breaks for the middle class. Republicans today proposed cutting the bloated state bureaucracy by an additional $446 million to meet the revised budget revenue estimates.

In the past 20 years, Connecticut’s population has grown by just 6.8 percent. Yet, at the same time, the state’s expenditures have ballooned by 270 percent. To increase taxes at this time, rather than reconsider how we provide services will only make our ability to keep pace in the world that much more difficult. Our budget proposal maintains services to the state’s needy, keeps us in compliance with federal stimulus requirements, maintains funding to municipalities, and does not raise taxes.   

Republicans rolled funding back in some state programs to slightly more than 2007 levels. The budget takes a balanced approach, taking into consideration the ability to create and obtain jobs, and the ability of already-strapped taxpayers to pay more taxes. The budget includes:

- Reduces state spending by 4 percent
- Maintains current state aid to municipalities
- Consolidates 23 state agencies into 6
-  Less borrowing than the other alternatives
- Maintains funding for social and human services

Rep. Miner is the ranking member of the legislature’s budget-writing Appropriations Committee. Budget negotiations are expected to resume next week.