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Yup you heard it right. Christine Stuart had a great story about the April 4, 2011 “debate” between Ned Lamont and Tom Foley. Lamont, Foley Criticize Parts of Malloy’s Budget Proposal
Turned out, everyone played their parts well. Lamont called Malloy’s budget plan the “first honest budget this state has seen in a long time.”
While Foley whined that “there are no sacrifices in this budget and no sacrifices for receivers of state spending.”
The discussion revealed yet again that Tom Foley simply “doesn’t get” how Connecticut state government works and who “benefits” from government programs and services.
The highlight of the entire evening though came when Tom Foley “praised Malloy’s decision not to boost income taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents by more than 0.2 percent”
At least you have to give him points for honesty.
Although he lost his bid for Governor, Foley is having a pretty good year.
First, as a member of Connecticut’s super wealthy, Foley gets to pocket more than $100,000 a year thanks to the Obama-Republican extension of the Bush Tax Cuts.
And then, while he complains that Malloy’s budget plan is all taxes and no cuts (which, of course is false) he actually thanks the Governor for not raising taxes significantly on people like him.
The fact is that Malloy’s plan does increase state income taxes on about 64% of the state’s taxpayers, while reducing income tax for about 8% of the people.
However, the tax increases are not applied evenly and the greatest additional burden falls on those with incomes of between $50,000 and $100,000.
As CT Voices has pointed out in the analysis of Malloy’s budget, a “household with $60,000 of income that normally claims a property tax credit of the maximum of $500 would lose that credit, resulting in an overall income tax increase of just over 0.8% of the household’s income. By comparison, a household with income of $200,000 would experience an overall increase of under 0.5% of its income.”
Overall, Malloy’s tax proposal has the greatest impact on those making below $1 million dollars.
At the highest levels, the increase in the income tax rate from 6.5% to 6.7% means the super wealthy would see a total increase in their “burden” of about 0.2% or about a quarter of the hit middle income families would be taking.
Before these tax changes take place, Connecticut's low- and middle-income families pay about 10% - 12% of their total income in state and local taxes while the state’s top earners pay less than 5% of their income in state and local taxes.
If Malloy’s plan is adopted, the total tax to income burden for the middle 20% will increase by about a full percent while the top 1 percent would see their share grow by less than half that amount.
And Foley says thanks – wow - talk about a priceless moment.
Where I come from, we’d say Tom Foley has pretty big ones to get up in front of an audience, after pocketing the windfall from the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and then praise Dan Malloy for giving Connecticut’s super rich yet another break.
So much for accepting the responsibility of paying one’s fair share.