Here’s what state could look like in 2022
The year is 2022. After preserving their state legislative majorities in 2020 thanks to national political winds, Connecticut Democrats were able to pass all remaining legislation in Hartford in 2021 that they could not during the prior two-year session. Here is how state Democrats’ fully implemented agenda could affect a fictional working mom and her family:
Julia needs to wake up earlier every morning since she moved a few towns away from Redding, where her two children attended the public schools and she was on the PTA. After Redding schools started sharing their superintendent and other services with neighboring Danbury, pushed by state Democrats’ school regionalization plan passed the year before, she found that they were far less responsive to parents and stretched in other ways, too. So, her family picked up and moved to the Byram section of Greenwich, despite the cost and effort involved, for the sake of her youngest daughter’s education.
Her daily commute to Danbury, where she still works as a registered nurse, has lengthened significantly. She also now has the displeasure of paying tolls to commute, which Gov. Ned Lamont and the General
Assembly finally managed to implement after much lobbying by big construction companies and unions. That will cost Angela an additional $750 out of pocket annually just to get to work and provide for her family.
For working, she now also pays a 0.5 percent payroll tax on her wages as part of the Paid Family Medical Leave Act passed by Democrat leadership in 2019. That’s $400 more every year on her nurse’s salary. On her way home, the takeout meals she usually buys her family for dinner now cost more due to a new tax introduced by Democrats in 2019 and increased in 2021, costing her another $175.
Her husband Carmelo, who immigrated to the United States as a young man, has had trouble finding full-time work since he was laid off from his job in the credit department of General Electric in 2016. GE moved much of its business out of Connecticut, citing an onerous economic environment under then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Carmelo has only found temporary work since then, while taking primary care of his and Julia’s two daughters, exacerbating his challenging search for a full-time job. It’s become much harder for parents with interruptions in their job history to find steady work since the Paid Leave Act passed, because many businesses find it too risky to hire workers without continuous experience. That’s arguably costing them tens of thousands.
The past few years have cut into the family’s savings they built over 20 for their daughters’ college education. Their oldest just graduated from high school and was accepted to UConn but was forced to defer for at least a year in order to work to help pay tuition. The problem is that after the $15 minimum wage law was passed by Connecticut Democrats, young people like her have had trouble finding any work when they need it. Young people and lowskill workers, who are most in need of any job, are increasingly being replaced by kiosk machines in stores and other technology on job sites.
Connecticut is the only place that Julia has ever called —or wants to call — home. She loves the people, its tight-knit communities, strong towns, natural beauty and more. Yet, it’s become almost impossible for middle-class parents like her to provide for their family here. It’s become painfully obvious to her in recent years that the state government, wholly controlled by Democrats, is doing everything in its power to penalize her for doing good and to chase her out of the state.
For us in the present day, there is a better way. Certainly, the taxes, fees, and regulations burdening Julia’s family with should be prevented or repealed. But Connecticut also needs a positive program of reform that makes it easier for people like her to work and raise a family.
A tax reform plan that simplifies the code in Connecticut and radically cuts the income tax rate for the middle class and working poor could be passed without altering the deficit. There should be a full accounting of Connecticut’s outsized regulatory burdens, which reduce wages and jobs overall, in a similar way that the government scorekeeper reviews our budget. From there, the state could wisely reduce red tape without sacrificing the public interest. Corporate welfare and special carve-outs for big unions should be repealed and unnecessary infrastructure projects avoided. And local control of schools and towns should be defended as a hallmark of Connecticut.
In all these ways and more, state government could make life easier for middleclass families. People should know that there is a better way in Connecticut.