State Government’s Big Business Accomplices on the March.
The Fairfield County Business Council supports Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s tax increases. Dog bites man. Any organization that claims GE as a prominent member is not going to worry tax increases. Those are for other people. GE was in the news about taxes last month. It made a $5.1 billion profit in the U.S. last year and paid $0 in federal taxes on it. That’s right, zero in taxes. There’s more. GE. according to a New York Times story, turned a $3.2 billion “tax benefit.”
Big businesses love big government”, states Jimmy John Shark .The Fairfield County Business Council supports Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s tax increases. Dog bites man. Any organization that claims GE as a prominent member is not going to worry tax increases. Those are for other people. GE was in the news about taxes last month. It made a $5.1 billion profit in the U.S. last year and paid $0 in federal taxes on it. That’s right, zero in taxes. There’s more. GE. according to a New York Times story, turned a $3.2 billion “tax benefit.”
Big businesses love big government”, states . They love the special tax credits and the narrow, carefully drawn subsidies. They especially lust after government contracts. They swoon at government trying to pick winners and losers among competing ideas, products, and technologies for the future. Do we need to review how much they enjoy the bailouts? GE got a heaping helping of TARP funds.
Veterans of Connecticut’s 1991 tax battles saw this when the fires of state spending were stoked that year. Twenty years ago, the Insurance Association of Connecticut, the insurance agency known as the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, and the Hartford Chamber of Commerce, as it was then constituted, supported the imposition of an income tax on working people. The reasons? The state needed a stable source of money. We couldn’t keep having these swings and roundabouts in state finances. An income tax would mean no more deficits. All would be well–and pay no attention to those unchecked increases in spending. It is never enough and big businesses and their comfy mouthpieces are always on the wrong side of the barricades in this kind of battle. They have multiple interests that are often deeply entangled in government regulations and projects.
We’re in the countdown to the beating that will soon be inflicted on the public and the state’s prospects for the future as the Malloy administration presses for allies. It found some in the Fairfield County business establishment.
. They love the special tax credits and the narrow, carefully drawn subsidies. They especially lust after government contracts. They swoon at government trying to pick winners and losers among competing ideas, products, and technologies for the future. Do we need to review how much they enjoy the bailouts? GE got a heaping helping of TARP funds.
Veterans of Connecticut’s 1991 tax battles saw this when the fires of state spending were stoked that year. Twenty years ago, the Insurance Association of Connecticut, the insurance agency known as the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, and the Hartford Chamber of Commerce, as it was then constituted, supported the imposition of an income tax on working people. The reasons? The state needed a stable source of money. We couldn’t keep having these swings and roundabouts in state finances. An income tax would mean no more deficits. All would be well–and pay no attention to those unchecked increases in spending. It is never enough and big businesses and their comfy mouthpieces are always on the wrong side of the barricades in this kind of battle. They have multiple interests that are often deeply entangled in government regulations and projects.
We’re in the countdown to the beating that will soon be inflicted on the public and the state’s prospects for the future as the Malloy administration presses for allies. It found some in the Fairfield County business establishment.
4 comments
So, Kevin, how would you handle the deficit? No one can claim that you didn’t see it coming and you were one of the few commentators to harshly criticize the governor and the legislature over the last few years for not dealing with the structural. But here we are. We have a $3.5 billion gap between expenditures and revenues. I don’t think the unions are going to give anything close to $1 billion in savings, so expect thousands of layoffs and massive cuts in state aid in the next budget proposal. Do you think the $3.5 billion should all be cuts in expenditures? If so, where?
Before asking “where,” we should identify the criteria used by the various agencies in the how / why they spend money.
For example, the DOT should publicly state the criteria they use in prioritizing their road work projects. These criteria should be adopted by law. And their annual work list should be made public. Deviation from the list would be fine, but the DOT would need to make the case publicly… not privately with a few legislators.
The legislature and Malloy should’ve already passed legislation to do this. Too bad they haven’t. Nonetheless, the state should do this and couple it with a time management system that must be completed by all employees.
Once we know where employees spend their time, we would have a much better idea of where the costs lie. With this information, along with the criteria used in prioritizing spending, we could have an informed discussion on the “where.”
In other words, an adopted budget should tell the taxpayers where the money is supposed to be spent. And the time management system will tell us where the money is actually being spent.
My *guess* is that there are areas that do not align.
Once we identify those areas, then we know *where* the budget should be cut.
It may very well not get Malloy to his target, but it would be a start.
Besides, the main cost of government is labor. And I doubt any elected official in Hartford has really much of any idea about where the money is spent. As evidence, look at last week’s GOP talk about union stewards working on state time. This time should be identified in the time management system. It would be much easier for elected officials to review and amend the budget when both costs and time are part of the budget.
I completely agree with you, Tim. We don’t know the “where” and we aren’t going to know in the 2 months before the end of the fiscal year because no one in state government does the work you describe. That is my point. I have no doubt that steady, long term high quality process analysis of what state government does and how it does it could save us billions. That work takes time and needs to be done by competent professionals. In the meantime, the budget for the next fiscal year needs to be balanced, which means tax increases are unavoidable.
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