There is much at stake for Connecticut's children in the upcoming elections. To provide background on child and family issues, Connecticut Voices for Children has developed several issue briefs and has distributed these to candidates for Connecticut's state and federal offices. The first set of briefs is available on our Voter and Candidate Resources page, along with links to related publications, lists of Connecticut candidates, and voter registration forms. Additional issue briefs on early care, education, child welfare, and health will be posted in the coming weeks.
The first briefs include:
Connecticut has a revenue problem. Recent non-partisan budget forecasts confirm what Connecticut families already know: the Great Recession is not really over. Personal incomes, business revenues, and as a result, Connecticut’s tax receipts, still lag. Adjusted for inflation, state tax revenues are lower today than they were five years ago, although our needs have continued to grow. This brief discusses the need to take a balanced approach to the budget deficit that includes revenues to ensure our children, and our state, are equipped to succeed in the future.
Connecticut's revenue system is falling short of providing the revenues we need to maintain the public structures that keep Connecticut strong and vibrant, including our education, health, public safety, environmental protection, and transportation systems. This candidate brief reviews problems with Connecticut's state revenue system. It outlines measures that can help our revenue system become more reliable, fair, and accountable, such as enacting a more progressive income tax, modernizing the sales tax, lowering Connecticut’s dependence on local property taxes, closing corporate tax loopholes, following through on evaluations of business tax subsidies with changes in policy, and assessing how state and local taxes affect different income groups and business types.
For decades, Connecticut’s lower-income families have faced stagnating wages, rising costs, and growing economic insecurity. In both good and bad times, Connecticut’s working families have seen their economic opportunities diminish. Even when the economy was growing, wages stagnated or declined for Connecticut’s low- and middle-income workers and an increasing proportion of Connecticut workers earned less than the wage necessary to keep a family of four out of poverty. The fact sheet suggests making several proven investments in the human capital of the state.
