Balancing The Budget On The Backs Of The Poor?
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=007d1b64-7301-45ab-a880-8de6bebf4a86
Democrats say that is what Gov. Rell is doing through fees, service cuts
By Ted Mann
Published on 6/14/2009
Hartford – Higher bus and train fares. Curtailed prescription drug assistance. Slashed college scholarships. Shuttered job training offices.
As Democratic legislators seek the upper hand in a budget standoff with Gov. M. Jodi Rell, leaders are increasingly pressing their case that the Republican governor’s proposal to close an $8.7 billion deficit without raising income taxes on the rich will require potentially onerous fee hikes and service cuts to Connecticut’s middle class and working poor.
That has been the theme of the carefully orchestrated publicity tours that Democratic leaders, led by House Speaker Christopher Donovan and Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., have led around the state over the past week – a roadshow of potential misery, highlighting the ways in which they say Rell’s preferred service cuts and revenue hikes represent a disproportionately heavy burden on the state’s least affluent.
”In her first budget, she made numerous cuts to the middle-income and poor,” Donovan said recently, as a press conference to protest the bus fare increases concluded on the New Haven Green. “Her subsequent cuts exacerbated that.”
Adding to the frustration of Democrats is what leaders consider the stealthy increases in revenue-generating fees hidden in the proposals offered by Rell, who has repeatedly said a 2010-11 budget could be finalized without increasing taxes.
”This is the governor’s tax increase,” said Rep. Cameron Staples, D-New Haven, at the rally on the green, referring to the bus fare increase.
Under Rell’s most recent proposal, bus fares would rise by either 40 percent or 50 cents, and commuter rail fares would go up 10 percent. The bus fare hike would bring New Haven fares from $1.25 to $1.75, but that relatively small price increase will quickly add up for low-income workers already struggling to stretch paychecks in a prolonged recession.
Commuting costs for New Haven workers would rise by $70 per month, and the cost for bus passes for schoolchildren would rise by $560 per child per year, according to figures from the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
”I think it’s pretty clear to us that if you look at both sides of the budget, whatever revenue she’s proposed – whether it’s fee increases, license increases – those are all hitting people of all incomes,” said Staples, “but like any other flat fee it’s disproportionately hitting people of low incomes.
”A $40 or $50 renewal fee for a license is irrespective of income. If you combine that with where the cuts are felt, you’ve really got to distribute the burden of this economy more equitably, and on the basis of who can afford to pay a little more and who can afford to take a reduction in services.”
The result of Rell’s proposals, he said, would be “a double whammy on the lower and middle class and virtually no impact on the more well-to-do.”
By contrast, Democratic proposals to raise marginal rates on the highest incomes would raise roughly $500 million per year, Staples said, enough to continue some valued programs through the current budget crisis.
Rell: No joy in cuts
In a brief interview at the Capitol on Thursday, Rell was dismissive of the argument that her proposals would soak the poor.
”We have an $8 billion deficit in this state,” the governor said. “None of the cuts are anything that any of us want to make. None of the fare increases are anything that any of us want to make. I’m sure that the $3 billion in taxes that they proposed are not taxes that they want to make. But we have to close this budget shortfall.”
Rell was also quick to say that the statewide publicity campaign by Democratic lawmakers to oppose her proposals was not going to force her to compromise on those convictions.
”I’m not pressured,” Rell said, repeating that statement two times. “I have a job to do, and our job is to get a budget for the state of Connecticut, but a budget that the people of the state can afford and that they can live with.”
But some pressure seemed to be having an effect.
A scheduled rally with Williams and other Democrats at Amistad Academy, the successful New Haven charter school that was slated to face a 10 percent cut under the governor’s proposals, was hastily called off Wednesday, after Democrats said the Rell administration had tentatively moved to restore the cut.
‘Fictional’ savings?
Deep concerns linger about proposed cuts to health care programs for the elderly and those with low incomes, including some that have already taken effect in stopgap measures intended to help close the deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
Among these is the elimination of the state’s so-called “wraparound” benefit for clients of the ConnPACE prescription drug program. The wraparound was adopted by the legislature after the creation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, and has paid for prescriptions prescribed to ConnPACE benficiaries that are not included on the federal program’s preferred drug list.
Rell has proposed phasing out the state benefit entirely beginning June 1.
And Democrats have acquiesced to some cuts, as with the Rell administration’s revision of the definition of “medical necessity” for 420,000 recipients of Medicaid, including the poor and the permanently disabled.
The new definition would eliminate current language requiring that Medicaid treatment be aimed to help recipients maintain an “optimum level” of health, and also would permit the program to submit cheaper treatment if it is deemed “similarly effective” to that prescribed for clients by doctors. Current law requires substituted treatments to be “equally effective.”
Health care advocates say the change could mean Medicaid recipients receive cheaper but less effective pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, and could substantially hurt the quality of life of those living with long-term disabilities or medical conditions.
The proposal, despite concerns from a wide array of advocacy groups, was adopted by the legislature’s Appropriations Committee in the Democrats’ own budget plan.
But even the administration’s projected savings from the medical necessity change – $4 million in 2010 and $9 million in 2011 – could be wishful thinking, said Kevin Lembo, the state Healthcare Advocate, whose office assists individuals in dealings with public and private insurance coverage, including the Medicaid program.
Denials of care or medical equipment resulting from the language change will in many cases be appealed, Lembo said, so even the savings Rell has assumed may not occur.
”I think it’s likely that the savings that are detailed are probably fictional,” he said.
Cuts hit the middle class
Some of the cuts to which Democrats have most objected will hit the middle class and those struggling to get back to work in a troubled climate, said Staples, citing Rell’s proposal to cut state-funded scholarships for private and public colleges, and the total elimination of a $15 million Jobs First training program.
”Every economist we’ve talked to has said what you do not do in a recession is cut education or cut job training,” Staples said.
To that, Rell still has a ready rejoinder: What the legislature still has not done, despite criticism of her own cuts, is vote on a budget of its own.
Both Williams and Donovan have said they are committed to doing so later this month.
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