Sen. Harding: Abandoning Fiscal Discipline Will Return CT to ‘permanent fiscal crisis’
August 1, 2024
(CT Mirror)
Gov. Ned Lamont, a fiscally moderate Democrat, is one of the strongest advocates for budget controls at their current settings, often calling them the state’s “fiscal guardrails.”
But the governor isn’t alone in defending the current configuration.
Republican minorities in both chambers back the status quo.
“The responsible fiscal guardrails that Republicans fought to put in place in 2017 have injected fiscal discipline into government spending, enabled tax cuts and lowered our debt,” Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, said after the poll was released. “ … Abandoning that fiscal discipline will return Connecticut to the infamous ‘permanent fiscal crisis’ we were in only a few short years ago.”
The president of the conservative Yankee Institute for Public Policy, Carol Platt Liebau, noted that required annual pension contributions are $650 million less than they otherwise would have been because of the surplus dollars they’ve received since 2020. Things might have otherwise been worse for social services and other core programs.
“The guardrails are working, so why on earth would we change course now?” she said.