Following my holiday greetings this afternoon a prominent Democratic representative quipped to me, “I hope Santa Claus comes to the Capitol.” I guess that is our only hope to address our budget crisis in Connecticut at this point given the majority Democratic leaders’ unwillingness to make the tough decisions.
Governor Rell called the legislature into a special session today to address a $337 million deficit in our current state budget. The deficit number is a moving target as no economist can predict Connecticut’s tax revenues for 2009. What is clear to all budget hawks at the Capitol is the deficit is growing and we will fall off another financial cliff in the next biennium budget.
The Democrats convened the Senate and House this morning and promptly adjourned without any action on the budget deficit. The night before Speaker Donovan held a press conference showing us how their budget shell game will play out:
- Blame the Governor for everything
- Claim the Governor’s proposal will kill 5,000 jobs in the state using fuzzy math
- Claim we can “save” $100 million by postponing payments to the state employees’ pension plan at a time we are already billions of dollars short in payments
- Create another “Blue Ribbon Commission” to study municipal aid and waste participants’ time developing a report with good ideas and then ignore the report
Santa Claus is a mighty fine fellow but he is not bringing billions of dollars to Connecticut Democrats for Christmas. Speaker Donovan and Senate President Williams have proven they are unwilling to make the tough decisions Connecticut’s taxpayers are demanding – CUT SPENDING!
