Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

Tax Freedom Day represents the day those of us living and working in Connecticut can begin to keep the money we work for.� The money we earned up to this date we were forced to give to government in some form of taxation.� Tax Freedom Day for most Americans is April 30, which translates to Connecticut workers having to work longer to pay state and local taxes.�� This information has been compiled by the Tax Foundation which was founded in 1937.� In summary, they have concluded that Americans work longer to pay for Government than they will for food, clothing and housing combined.� Visit the Tax Foundation�s website below to learn more about their research and findings which compares the number of days Americans work to pay taxes to the number of days they work to support themselves.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxfreedomday/

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A MESSAGE FROM GOVERNOR RELL

New Revenue Projections Mean No New Taxes

On May 15, 2007 Governor Rell� Released the following message:

Connecticut�s economy is strong and growing and with the new revenue projections I have just received, I firmly believe that we can adopt a budget for the next biennium that contains no tax increases whatsoever.

This is terrific news for Connecticut taxpayers. On June 6th, we can conclude the legislative session with a final budget that contains zero tax increases, a property tax cap that will finally give our residents the property tax relief they have been promised for decades and the investments in education that will make our schools the best in the country.

I am calling upon our lawmakers to work with me to fulfill those promises. They have talked about these issues for years. Our citizens overwhelmingly support investments in education and property tax limits. We can provide both without raising taxes � any remaining excuses for inaction have been eliminated with these latest OFA numbers.

Based upon projected revenues for the 2007, 2008 and 2009 Fiscal Years, I am convinced that we can reach a final agreement on a new state budget that is balanced and that invests in the critical priorities of this state, particularly in our children�s education.

In my budget proposal, I offered a plan to provide health care coverage to every uninsured Connecticut resident who needs it through the Charter Oak Health Care Plan, through premium assistance to make the monthly premiums affordable to even our poorest citizens and through enhancements to HUSKY outreach.

I also offered an energy plan � the only energy plan on the table -- to provide both short-term relief at the pump and longer-term initiatives designed to drive the state toward more efficient energy usage and to foster renewable resources.

I called on the legislature to act on my proposal to cap the gross receipts tax on gasoline and other petroleum products at the wholesale price of $1.75 a gallon.

I also called for the scheduled July 1 increase in the gross receipts tax to be rolled back. Gas prices have jumped more than 33 percent in recent months, with the average price of regular gas rising well-above three dollars a gallon.

There are just three weeks to go in the 2007 legislative session and I believe we can make meaningful progress on the four issues that speak to the need for generational investment: education, energy, health care and responsible growth. There are actions we can take and this is the time to move these issues forward. This is the time to honor our commitments, to work together and to show real leadership.

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IF YOU ARE TIRED OF HIGH GASOLINE PRICES

Governor Rell Offers a Petition for You to Sign Click Here

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Florence Stahl , flostahl@snet.net , President of the Avon Taxpayers Association and FCTO Board Member writes about what is driving up property taxes � SPENDING.� Read her excellent comments which recently appeared in the Hartford Courant.�

Letter to Editor � Property Tax Reform/The Hartford Courant

Dear Editor: So many words, so little substance (Property Tax Reform, Commentary Section, Sunday, May 6, 2007). Revenue reconfigurations to alleviate property taxes, no matter how ingenious, are band-aids at best and cruel promises at worst. Spending, particularly in the area of public education, got us there and reduced spending is the only way out.�� Although administrators and teachers may have noble intentions, those of us in the trenches feel the effect of salaries and benefits that far exceed the private sector. We see the trend toward more and more personnel to get the job done. We understand the legal choke-hold that binding arbitration places on local officials. We can differentiate between� union� as in The International Ladies� Garment Workers, and� union� as in the closed-shop monopoly called public education. And we know there is an entrenched culture that resists cost containment. But until the good Governor and her legislative colleagues stop pretending that these issues are irrelevant to the very core of property taxes, the problem will remain forever camouflaged by pretty rhetoric.� Just as all rivers run to the sea, all revenue sources flow from the taxpayer.�� Florence Stahl

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Congratulations to the Town of Manchester

Is your town implementing Revaluation?� Is the impact of Revaluation to be phased in?� Are you confused as to what you will pay in property taxes, resulting from the phase in of� revaluation?� See what the Town of Manchester is providing its homeowners!� http://www.townofmanchester.org/assessor/propertytax/

As FCTO and other concerned taxpayers throughout the State continue to strive to improve the efficiency of government and to lessen the burden of property taxation, we expect town officials to be forthright with us in providing us with access to the information we need.�� The Town of Manchester has provided their constituents with a valuable tool to determine the taxes they will pay as a result of phasing in the impact of revaluation.�

We suggest you refer your town officials to Manchester�s website.� Ask that they too implement a similar tool which will allow you to determine the property taxes you will be expected to pay.�� FCTO commends Manchester officials for providing this valuable resource to its constituents.�

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The Public Trough Is Bigger Than Ever
By John Stossel, Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Bill Clinton once declared,� The era of big government is over.� Both Republicans and Democrats applauded.

What a joke. Government grew under Clinton, and grew even faster under his successor. Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major part of its income from the state.

So says a study by economist Gary Shilling. Shilling, a Springfield, N.J., consultant and forecaster, says the portion of Americans feeding substantially at the public trough stands at 52.6 percent. In 2000, it was 49.4. It seems unbelievable that in 1950, only 28.3 percent of Americans lived off the taxpayers. Shilling projects 60 percent by 2040.

One out of five Americans works for some level of government or for a firm that depends on taxpayer financing. One in five also draws Social Security or a federal pension. That number will grow as the baby boomers move on to Social Security, which, let's not forget, is a transfer program.

Among other recipients of largess: Nine million are on food stamps, 2 million received housing subsidies, and 5 million go to school on the federal taxpayer. In Shilling's reckoning, dependents of recipients are also part of the group he calls� government beneficiaries.�

Wasn't the welfare system reformed in 1996? On the surface, yes. Cash payments are available only for a limited time and recipients are expected to work eventually. Millions of women once on welfare have gone to work. But the idea that the taxpayer has gotten a break or that overall dependency has decreased is a myth. As the AP reported:� The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid. The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor -- including Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits -- are bursting with new enrollees. The result ... is that nearly one in six persons rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago.�

The handouts go to the well off, too. Farm programs and corporate subsidies benefit big farmers and big business, and wealthy people draw large Medicare benefits. The Cato Institute says there are nearly 1,700 federal subsidy programs spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

According to Michael Tanner's� Leviathan on the Right , federal domestic spending under President Bush has risen 27 percent in real terms, while discretionary non-entitlement spending has gone up 4.5 percent a year. (Clinton's annual increase was� only� to 2.1 percent.)

Who'd have thought that a Republican president would challenge Lyndon Johnson's spending record?

Government is� that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else,� wrote Frederic Bastiat, the great laissez-faire economist of Nineteenth-Century France. Of course, everyone cannot live at the expense of everyone else, but people who understand nothing about economics try, egged on by politicians looking for an election-wining coalition.

Government has no wealth of its own. Before it gives anything to anyone, it must take from those who produced it. But the taking could discourage future production, leaving less to be distributed by the politicians. Productive Americans have forged ahead despite a constellation of transfer programs, but how long will they continue to do so?

The European welfare states are learning that producers don't leave themselves available for milking forever. Their economies are sluggish, and unemployment is high. Government promises exceed resources, and citizens who were guaranteed lifelong security find their benefits shrinking.

Yet this doesn't deter our champions of big government. Even the coming Social Security and Medicare train wrecks don't faze them. So don't expect government to stop growing. The Washington Post reports ominously:� In the four months since the midterm elections, the number of new lobbyist registrations has nearly doubled to 2,232 from 1,222 in the comparable period a year earlier.�

The lobbyists go where the money and the power is.

Thomas Jefferson said,� The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.�

John Stossel is an award-winning news correspondent and author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel--Why Everything You Know is Wrong.

Send an email to John Stossel