Why are you looking at me?
Posted on 05/06/2006 10:02:51 AM PDT by antonia
May 01, 06
fairfieldcountybusinessjournal.com
Dems choose high taxes while working families struggle
http://www.fairfieldcountybusinessjournal.com/archive/050106/0501060019.php
DebraLee Hovey
For all their high-minded rhetoric about supporting middle-class and working families in Connecticut, when helping them involves easing their tax burden, the liberal Democratic majority in the General Assembly almost always come down on the side of higher taxes.
Their reflexive opposition to cutting taxes was on display for all to see recently when they killed a Republican measure that would have lowered electricity bills for most ratepayers.
Their timing could not have been worse. In addition to shouldering one of the highest overall tax burdens in the United States, Connecticut' s middle-class and working families this year are struggling to cope with sharp increases in the prices of gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and electricity.
Electricity rates went up significantly this year for most Connecticut consumers, and those who were spared this year can almost certainly expect a sharp increase next year.
In 2005, Northeast Utilities was granted a rate increase amounting to 22 percent which took effect this year. A 5 percent hike was approved for United Illuminating that also took effect this year, but UI ratepayers can expect a much higher increase to go into effect in 2007.
Our proposal, an amendment to another bill relating to electricity-distribution companies, would have reduced the state' s gross-earnings tax on electricity bills from 6.8 percent to 4 percent for residential customers and from 8.5 percent to 5 percent for commercial customers. The tax is passed on to consumers in their electricity bills.
The majority Democrats in the state House of Representatives used a parliamentary maneuver to kill our proposal.
While a 4 percent to 5 percent saving on an electric utility bill may not seem like much to liberal Democratic legislators who think only in terms of revenue increase to the state treasury, to middle-class families who are paying $3 a gallon or more for gasoline any action we can take to put more money back in their pockets means a lot.
With the projected state budget surplus now estimated at more than $600 million, the state could easily have absorbed the estimated revenue loss of $55 million to $60 million that our amendment would have saved Connecticut consumers.
Middle-class and working families, who work hard to feed their families, pay their mortgages and send their children to college, are finding it particularly difficult to make ends meet this year and would have welcomed the savings our proposal would have provided them.
I am frustrated and puzzled by the Democrats' attitude toward a proposal that would have benefited almost all of their constituents. They denied Connecticut' s middle-class and working families a little relief from high electricity bills they are struggling to pay -- while the state' s revenue loss would have been barely missed and easily afforded.
State Rep. DebraLee Hovey, R-112th District, is the House ranking member on the General Assembly' s Legislative and Executive Nominations Committee, and serves on the Education and Judiciary committees. Reach her at mailto:debralee.hovey@housegop.state.ct.us.
..the liberal Democratic majority in the General Assembly almost always come down on the side of higher taxes.
Their reflexive opposition to cutting taxes was on display for all to see recently when they killed a Republican measure that would have lowered electricity bills for most ratepayers.
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The socialist Dems are making no bones about who and what they are. All-powerful socialist government, controlling the American polulace, their wealth and their destiny is their very Marxist goal. Taxation is their artery of continued existence -- being able to control and buy votes and the wealth and property of the public -- right out of the Communist Manifesto. No surprise.
Democrats ALWAYS lie about cutting taxes pre-election... then ALWAYS raising them post-election.
My little town in Arizona has been throroughly "Californicated" with McMansions, half-mil condos, etc. Not content to squander their own money, my new neighbors are busy squandering the public purse on every kind of stupid "improvement" they can possibly conceive. After four or five years, the vast majority of this mob move on to other "chic" communities, leaving behind a growing mountain of public debt and without an inkling of the damage their "contribution" has caused. Nauseating.
Thanks for this! I just fired off an email to the representative author complimenting her. Not that anything will change in this blue state, but I told her to keep up the good work....
Told her that it is not enough to say down here in Stamford that "at least we don't pay Westchester taxes...." anymore.
It's kind of like saying death by a thousand paper cuts is better than getting shot.
"For all their high-minded rhetoric about supporting middle-class and working families ... the liberal Democratic majority in the General Assembly almost always come down on the side of higher taxes."
Of course. "Tax the rich to feed the poor till there are no rich no more" only goes so far. Demonrat voters seem to forget that middle-income people are going to get nailed, and even though they pay a lower rate, it leaves less in absolute terms. When you want somebody else to pay for public purposes, you inevitably become that somebody else eventually.
People get the government they deserve,just keep voting them in folks!!
Actually it would be great if the Republicans gave the Democrats what they want. You'd have most of New England changing its mind about "taxing the rich".
The trouble is most people confuse wealth and income.
Rich Democrats are happy that most people have confused wealth with income because their income is small compared to their wealth.
I say give them what they want. Throw in a tax on intellectual property wealth, too. You'd see Hollywood changing its politics in a second.
After 25 years there, seeing and hearing them "denounce" tax cuts, rationalize tax increases, overlook pedophilia in their state representative, accept homosexual marriage, drive Volvos and Land Rovers while disparaging Ford and GM for their treatment of unions, lambast free enterprise, accept global warming as being caused by jet contrails and shouting "Bush lied" while fawning over all things Clintonian; I am so damn happy to be free of them.
Free at last!
Thank God Almighty!
With apologies and sympathies to those FReepers left behind in Connecticut.
Why are you looking at me?
There isn't a thing Democrats are not able to fix with higher taxes.
Problem is, they dig up a never ending array of problems in need of injustices, thereby killing the economy and moving us into Socio Land called Europe with 10% unemployment.
All gets equalized evenly poor, a dream come true for Dems.
It's easy. The Dems' constituents are either the people paying no taxes and getting all of the "services" or the people who pay some taxes and get it back 20-fold in the paychecks they receive working (hardly at all) for the state or municipalities.
Good Point
All libs have an innate inability to cut taxes. It's why they are libs. Cutting taxes goes against the grain of all big government libs who only want increased taxes...the better to run (and ruin) peoples lives.
If you vote in any Politician that raises taxes then you get what you deserve. If your politician raises your taxes, fire his butt next election. Don't do like the fools in Conn. and keep hiring the same fools then bitch about high taxes.
Oh, by the way spending in this congress has been unbelieveable and high. And it is run by Republicans or is that RINOS?
| My chief complaint with apostles of gauche caviar is not their altruism or their expressions of guilt but their unwillingness to acknowledge that wealth plays a positive economic and social role in our society, that the taxation of wealth stifles useful economic activity and is just as likely to hinder the development of charitable enterprises. 'Altruism', as practiced by the bureaucracy of the state most often fails at what it's announced intentions are. Most of our public programs serve only those who have been employed by the bureaucracy which rules the program. Take for example the tax free status of our institutions of 'higher' learning. For all their free moneys an institution such as Yale gives a place to Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former ambassador-at-large for the Taliban, is now studying at Yale on a U.S. student visa. Large Bureaucracies Cannot Possibly Achieve their Goals |
If this is news in Connecticut, the people er sheeple there have been doing a very long Rip Van Winkle.
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