“A troubling pattern”: Senate GOP Statement on Gov.’s “Childcare Endowment” Proposal

For Immediate Release

Sen. Heather Somers and Sen. Stephen Harding today issued the following statement regarding the governor’s proposal to create a “Universal Childcare Endowment”.

“This is an off-budget slush-fund. It’s a fiscal guardrail breaker and a future tax hike creator.  CT’s top business and industry organization immediately panned the governor’s funding scheme.

And this is now a troubling pattern for Gov. Lamont.

This week, the governor signed legislation creating yet another off-budget account that went around the guardrails and made a mockery of them.

Gov. Lamont says he wants to maintain fiscal discipline, but look at his actions. He is doing everything he can to violate the smart, bipartisan guardrails that have served our state so well.

Republicans would have been in full support of finding $30 million – within the confines of the budget – and putting it towards daycare and preschool spending. Early childhood supports are a critical CT workforce issue.

But it’s the way Gov. Lamont goes about it that is so disappointing.

He is taking $300 million of taxpayer money and throwing it off-budget into essentially a slush fund. The slush fund will gain maybe three or four percent interest, when we could be paying down our state credit card debt at seven or eight percent with that same exact money.

Make sense to you? Is that how you would run your own household finances?“