Governor Rell’s budget proposal has prompted the budget battle lines to be drawn. While ECS reform has been on the agenda of Democrats for a number of years, Jim Amann plans to focus on the priority of heath care. According to this Journal Inquirer article:
“I want to make sure we stick to our game plan,” House Speaker James A. Amann, D-Milford, said Friday.
The speaker, who for the last two years has overseen a working group on children’s health care needs, vowed last fall that the health insurance landscape would change dramatically this year.
“After ‘07, no kid’s going to have to worry about health insurance,” he told the Journal Inquirer in September.
“It’s going to be the transportation bill next year,” he added, comparing the importance of his objective with the transportation network overhaul that has dominated lawmakers’ focus for the past two years.
Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, was the first legislative leader to speak out on health care, vowing to force a debate this year on a pool of uninsured residents that has grown - not shrunk - since the recession years of 2001-03.
“The No. 1 domestic issue on people’s minds across the country and in Connecticut is health care,” Williams said. “It you don’t have health insurance, you’re worried every single day of your life.
“If we don’t tackle this issue in a way that provides greater affordability, greater quality, and greater sustainability, then we are letting down the families of Connecticut.”
Democrats, who control 107 of 151 seats in the House and 24 of 36 in the Senate, entered the legislative session on Jan. 3 with their health care objectives in sight.
On Jan. 26 Williams and his fellow Senate Democrats offered an initiative to dramatically expand state-subsidized health insurance, to spend $250 million to raise payments to doctors who treat the poor, and to study allowing more residents to buy health coverage through state government.
Rell ‘dazzled’ Democrats with ECS
But health care was forced out of the headlines just two weeks later when Rell unveiled a $35.8 billion plan for the 2007-09 budget years that contained the largest expansion of education aid in state history.
The $3.4 billion in new funding Rell proposed for the next five years included $2.7 billion in Education Cost Sharing grants to cities and towns.
Rell made clear in her budget address that while her budget requires sacrifices in other areas, state government has an opportunity to end decades of underfunding of public education.
The real issue here, is that both initiatives plan for breaking the spending cap, something that will be hard to do without a compromise between the Governor and the Legislature. The political battle will likely be fierce. But misplaced. There are fundamental problems with the way in which the state accounts for its budget and psending in the first place. Without addressing these issues, like adopting GAAP, the arguments about spending and revenues can never be based on accurate numbers.
Source: The Journal Inquirer, It’s Rell vs. the Democrats; Health care, education hang in balance, By Keith M. Phaneuf, Journal Inquirer, 03/02/2007
