CT Must Offset Federal Cuts to Public Benefits

Connecticut Voices for Children's new report, The Case and Policy Options for Connecticut to Offset New Federal Cuts to Public Benefits, was released to a crowded room of advocates and organizers at the 25th Tax & Budget Forum.

The report examined how the state’s fiscal controls and tax structure are hurting working class families by limiting sustained, meaningful investments in human needs. The report emphasized how Connecticut can move from temporary fixes to long-term policy choices that make affordability real and fully fund communities being devastated by the MAGA “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” enacted last July.

This Act provides tax cuts that heavily benefit high-income households. Those with incomes above $500,000 a year are estimated to receive 33% of the total tax cut, amounting to $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

The law pays for the tax cuts for high-income households by making about $1.5 trillion in cuts to public benefits, reducing essential support for low- and middle-income households. This includes nearly $1.1 trillion in cuts to health care benefits, including Medicaid; allowing a more than $300 billion expansion of the Premium Tax Credit for health insurance to expire; and cutting food assistance by about $190 billion.

At least150,000 people in Connecticut are expected to lose health insurance and 58,000 households are expected to have food assistance cut. At the same time, the top 10% of households are estimated to gain more than $9,200 each.

The report presented five policy proposals that would make it possible to address these extreme and devastating inequities including raising tax rates on high-income households (single tax filers above $500,000, and married tax filers above $1 million) or high-value estates (worth more than $15 million).

Together, the policy proposals would raise close to $500 million a year, providing resources for Connecticut to close the gap left by the cruel federal cuts to human needs.

Advocates are demanding that in these dire circumstances the Legislature and Governor stand up for the people of Connecticut in this session and make sure that basic needs are funded to address health care, housing, hunger and growing poverty.

Boycott forces Avelo to End Deportation Flights

A major victory was won last week when Avelo Airlines announced they are ending their contract to conduct deportation flights for ICE with DHS. On January 27 they will leave Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona, where the flights departed.

Last April when news of the ICE flights surfaced in New Haven, outraged immigrant rights groups, state and local elected officials and clergy launched the boycott. It spread across the country and soon Avelo ws forced to end west coast flights.

Avelo claimed they contracted with DHS for financial reasons. The boycott showed that trying to profit from deportations and family separation does not pay off.

The New Haven boycott against it's “hometown airline” at Tweed New Haven airport was soon joined by 25 cities.

During a national day of protest last May, one of many vigils at the entrance to the New Haven airport was led by the New Haven Immigrants Coalition “to mourn and stay in solidarity with those who have been and will be removed without due process.”

A New Hampshire resident purchased two billboards near the airport saying “Does your vacation support their deportation? Just say AvelNO!”

The mayor of New Haven banned all business with the airline for City travel, as did the Wilmington, Delaware City Council

Attorney General William Tong began investigating Avelo's fuel tax break with the State. Upon hearing of the company's break with DHS Tong said, “If this means that Avelo is no longer electing to profit from Trump’s cruel and reckless deportation program, the separation of families, deportation of children and citizens, and denial of due process rights, then it’s about time.”

At a New Haven press conference attended by over 100 the day after the announcement, Kica Matos president of the National Immigration Law Center declared,“We organized, we protested, we boycotted, and we said we would not stop until Avelo stopped being complicit in human suffering. Today, we celebrate. Let this be a reminder that when we fight, we win.”

The rally also protested the cold blooded murder of Rene Good by an ICE official in Minnesota.

Yale: Pay Your Fair Share

by Rev. Scot Marks

As Yale and the City of New Haven negotiate a revenue agreement in the coming year, we must work towards a transformational investment in the city that gives all our residents opportunities.

In 2024 New Haven gave a $106 million tax break to Yale and Yale New Haven Hospital. With that money we could have hired 600 teachers, built three community centers and helped 100 families get into permanent housing.

$106 million is everything to New Haven, especially our children – and it's just 2% of what Yale's endowment made in the last year alone.

I arrived in New Haven in 1964, escaping the racial and economic exploitation of the North Carolina sharecropping system keeping families like mine impoverished.

In New Haven we met its own long story of racial and economic exploitation. The American Eugenics Society on Yale's campus led the country in establishing pseudo scientific theories that helped justify segregated development in New Haven.

Yale used the labor of enslaved people to build the campus's first building and its leaders crushed what would have been the country's first HBCU.

In a moment when a federal administration is attacking US cities, censoring our country's racist history and giving more to billionaires while we suffer from a cost of living crisis, Yale must join our community and city as partners in confronting its own history and the detrimental impact on many of our residents.

New Haven should have world class schools. Instead our schools badly need repair, our teachers are underpaid and overworked, and our classrooms are overcrowded. All this while our city hosts one of the best and wealthiest educational institutions in the world.

Our movement led the way in getting Yale to increase its voluntary payment to New Haven before. This July that contribution will drop from an annual $10 million to $2 million, and to $0 the following year. And it is not enough for Yale to renew – it is time to expand. It took over 10,000 people taking action for the last commitment and now we need to redouble our efforts.