So at 5 p.m. Friday Senate President Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan stood side by each and promised to ram through a deficit-mitigation plan to erase the half-billion-dollar shortfall in the budget that runs through June 30. Over the next 12 hours, culmimating in a 5:19 a.m. Senate vote, the deal with the House unraveled under threat of a Gov. Rell veto. How much fun do you think the governor, in Denver visiting her grandkids, no less, and her chief of staff, Lisa Moody, had? The Blogster believes plenty indeed.
Here’s Williams’ current news release on the state of reduced budget expectations. Williams could round up only 21 of his 24 votes, proving that the Senate Democratic caucus was the weaker link in this ploy.
So today, Williams “is urging” the House to schedule a debate on the Senate bill. “The mitigation plan contains nearly $185 million in spending cuts and fund reductions. It also increases the state receipt of federal funds through a hospital fee (similar to Gov. Rell’s proposal), and delays the cut in the estate tax for multi-million dollar estates,” Williams said. “Not only does the plan balance the current year’s deficit, it also reduces the deficit in the next fiscal year by more than $70 million. It is time for the House to pass this bill. I am also calling for a bipartisan budget meeting with all leaders as soon as the governor returns to Connecticut.”
21 votes, under the promise of a veto, does not make a “comfortable majority.”
How in the world, Mr. Dixon, does passing a deficit-mitigation plan by a comfortable majority constitute “ramming” it through? Unlike your fellow Republicans, Mr. Dixon, Democrats actually are independent thinkers and the Democratic Party contains a substantial range of viewpoints. Passing this measure with 21 of 24 Democratic votes hardly constitutes “ramming”. Please tell us how you can characterize a quintessential exercise in American democracy, i.e., passing a bill by a majority vote, a perversion of American democracy, and “ramming”?
And please tell us how you failed to point out that our out-to-lunch governor, or in this case, out-on-vacation governor, somehow escapes criticism from you? We are in the midst of trying to close a budget gap, but once again, Governor Rell is nowhere to be found. Isn’t this so typical of this governor? She couldn’t be bothered to go to Washington to lobby for either transportation funds or education funds. Her slap-dash application for education funds contained scores of unanswered questions. She waited days to offer state aid to the hard-hit southwestern portion of the state after the worst storm in decades. And she couldn’t be bothered to participate in most of the budget discussions last year. But all you can say is that she probably had “plenty” of “fun” while on vacation after learning that the Democratic plan failed to pass with a veto-proof majority? Come on.
Perhaps instead of gloating over the governor’s veto threat, you could have pointed out that her previous budget was based on a total fantasy- a make-believe budget deficit that pretended that the state’s deficit was $2 billion less than the state’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis said it was even before she came up with her budget.
A bit of balance, if you please. And again, majority rule is not a perversion of the democratic process.