Veto the Anti-Worker Republican Budget!

In the late night hours of Friday September 15, Senate and House Republicans were joined by nine Democrats to pass a cruel and corrupt budget for Connecticut that hurts everyone except millionaires and corporations.

As soon as word got out, unions, community groups, clergy, disability groups, educators and many others began mobilizing to tell Governor Malloy to veto this devastating Republican budget.

A "Stop the Madness" rally on Thursday afternoon at the Capitol included many hospital workers, building cleaners and construction workers who told their stories. A rally on Friday was to feature clergy and others exposing the budget as immoral.

The budget makes devastating cuts to the needs of working families and also creates structural changes that end or weaken collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

The budget decimates higher education, eliminates public financing of elections, eradicates tax credits for the poor, slashes Medicaid for 60,000 Connecticut residents, and imposes a high tax on teacher pensions.

In addition, the proposed budget ends collective bargaining for state employee pensions, imposes changes in their pensions after 2027 (when the current labor agreement expires), and starts counting those savings in the proposed biennial budget.

Referring to $75 million in cuts to the earned income tax credit for the working poor, Connecticut AFL-CIO President Lori Pelletier said, "Instead of helping workers, this budget actually forces them to pay more in taxes."

At the same time, the budget lowers the estate and gift taxes that benefit the wealthy.

“The insistence of Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats on protecting corporations and the ultra-wealthy is an insult to public workers who have sacrificed billions in wages and benefits to help Connecticut dig out of a hole created by austerity budgeting," said Sal Luciano Director of AFSCME Council 4.

"The Republican budget is a gift to the rich and a body blow to the working class. It must be rejected out of hand,” he concluded.

The Democrats who turned their backs on working people to pass this budget are: Senators Paul Doyle, Joan Hartley and Gayle Slossberg; and Representatives Pat Boyd, John Hampton, Cristin McCarthy-Vahey, Lonnie Reed, Kim Rose and Daniel Rovero.