CT Democrats Add $700 million in taxes for 2011 Fiscal Year
With a looming state budget deficit of historic proportions, a majority of legislative Democrats on the budget-writing Appropriations Committee voted in favor of a budget adjustment adding $700 million in taxes for 2011 Fiscal Year – on top of the $1.5 billion in new taxes enacted only seven months ago and a projections of a looming $4 billion deficit in 2012.
The budget passed by the Appropriations Committee imposes a new 5.5% tax on hospitals, increases spending by $758 million (4%) over this year’s budget, and fails to take into account any proposals that the Governor or Republicans have offered such as agency consolidation, fraud protections, elimination of waste and duplication of services or any privatization of state services. The Appropriation Committee also used accounting gimmicks such as re-allocating operating costs for programs such as school based health centers from the General Fund away from the budget calculations to the Insurance Dept budget, which is funded with payments from the insurance industry.
