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Citing the financial toll that the pandemic has taken on many Connecticut residents, progressive Democratic lawmakers and advocates on Thursday renewed calls for higher taxes on the states wealthiest.

While Gov. Ned Lamont, planning re-election this year, opposes raising more revenue from the rich, the legislative Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, during a day-long, virtual public hearing, heard impassioned calls for the highest earners to pay more for state services.

Republicans on the tax-writing panel oppose the three bills that are the focus of the progressive push, including an added tax on houses worth more than $1.2 million; a capital gains surcharge of one percent on the sale or exchange of assets; and a permanent Earned Income Tax Credit of 41.5 percent of the federal EITC.

As our country and our state continue to recover from the brutal physical and emotional trauma of COVID-19, we cannot forget the financial toll it has taken on many of us, especially our working poor and middle-class wage earners who have borne the brunt of the economic crisis, said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, who submitted all three bills. Meanwhile, many at the high end of the income scale have prospered like never before.

Under questioning from committee members, Looney quoted non-partisan legislative staff who estimated that the one-percent capital gains surcharge would generate about $131 million in annual revenue.

Similar bills in recent years failed, except for an increase in the EITC, which Looney and Speaker of the House Matt Ritter this week vowed to make permanent at 41.5 percent. Last year the committee approved a so-called consumption tax that would have hit Connecticuts wealthy, but the proposal died without action in the biennial budget-setting process.

Ed Hawthorne, president of the state AFL-CIO, said that while people such as Connecticuts 13 billionaires have gained wealth during the pandemic, most of the rest of the state has struggled.

Hundreds of thousands of working people, especially working people of color and our essential workers that went to work every day saw their lives upended, Hawthorne said. The ultra-wealthy have been allowed to rig the rules in their favor for years. Theyve skirted their responsibility to fund our schools, our education infrastructure, healthcare programs and other vital public services.

He also supports a 10-percent tax on digital advertising on corporations with income over $10 billion, to bring in about $140 million in new revenue.

Like other speakers in favor of the bills, Hawthorne had a digital backdrop of the Recovery for All CT, an umbrella group of faith, community and labor organizations, behind him as he spoke.

Across Connecticut, regardless of our race, gender, income level, or town in which we live, we have all pulled together to navigate the pandemic and its ensuing financial devastation. But not all of us suffered equally, said Beverly Brakeman of West Hartford, regional director of the United Auto Workers, Region 9A, which has 30,000 members in New England, New York City, and Puerto Rico.

In 2022, we remain a state of vast inequality despite being one of the wealthiest states in the nation, she said. This is not something of which we should be proud because the result of such disparity is despair and suffering. We see this vast inequality play out every day in income, wealth, housing, food security, health and health care outcomes, education, and access to public services.

The lowest earners of our state are paying 26 percent of their income to state and municipal taxes, while those making $1.6 million and above are only paying 6.67 percent, said state Rep. Kara Rochelle, D-Ansonia, whose district includes part of Derby. This is obviously incredibly unfair and creates a deep burden that goes beyond just the numbers. She said her district includes 12,463 households classified as the working poor. These are folks living from paycheck-to-paycheck and cannot even afford a $500 crisis.

The Connecticut Business and Industry Association testified against the legislative proposals. It is clear that towns and cities cannot rely solely on property taxes and inconsistent state aid to fund essential services and often mandated programs, the CBIA said in prepared testimony. Adding 2 mills to high-end homes is not the answer.

Republican push back on the committee was led by lawmakers including Rep. Devin Carney of Old Lyme and Rep. Laura Devlin of Fairfield.

I just think we give certain urban leaders a pass when policies that they put into place that negatively affect students and I think they did during this pandemic, Carney said during an exchange with Brakeman, who had pointed out the disparity between school systems in wealthy suburbs and those of the inner cities. I think, honestly, those leaders have gotten a pass for a long time. Coming to the Finance Committee and asking for us to make changes in the things that happen in Hartford and New Haven may be a little bit short-sighted.

I would say that I think what this committee can do, with your charges, is to look at the system of taxation, which is not fair, Brakeman replied. And that is a way to equalize how we mete out our education, housing and all those kinds of services.

Devlin during an exchange with a representative of state certified public accountants, warned that the wealthy can easily leave the state if they believe taxes are too high.

This years short, 12-week session that ends at midnight on May 4, is focused on adjusting the second year of the budget, which starts on July 1. Lamont wants to focus on property tax credits, a statewide tax rate for motor vehicles that would lower taxes for many, as well as ending income taxes for pension income.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT

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Progressive Democrats, unions, again push for higher taxes on CTs wealthiest - CT Insider

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is out with a new set of ads knocking Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) over a recently released memo laying out what he thinks the GOP agenda should be if Republicans recapture control of the Senate this year.

The four-figure digital ad buy is set to begin running on Saturday in the Villages, Fla., ahead of Scotts speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.

Rick Scott and the Republican Party have made their agenda crystal clear: they want to raise taxes on over half of Americans including seniors and retirees without offering a single proposal to lower costs for hardworking families, Allyson Bayless, a spokeswoman for the DNC, said in a statement.

This is the Republican Partys official platform, and the DNC will use every resource at our disposal to make sure voters know exactly what Republicans stand for, she added.

Scotts 31-page memo, which he released on Tuesday, offers a glimpse of his vision for what a Republican majority in the Senate might pursue. Among the ideas outlined in the memo is a call for all Americans to pay at least some income tax.

The plan was met with immediate criticism from Democrats, who accused Scott of pushing for new taxes for low-income Americans. But the memo also received some criticism from Republicans, who have sought to make the 2022 midterm elections a referendum on Democratic control of Washington.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellOvernight Health Care Presented by Alexion Battle lines drawn over COVID-19 funding Pelosi says Boebert and Greene 'should just shut up' Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey tells donors he won't run for Senate MORE (R-Ky.) notably declined last year to release an agenda ahead of the midterms.

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Democrats hit Scott over agenda in new ads | TheHill - The Hill

The bills enjoy broad support the 42 co-sponsors of Ms. Spanbergers TRUST in Congress Act include Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Harris of Maryland, all firmly in the Trump wing of their party and if anything, they are putting Ms. Pelosi in the spotlight.

You have the speaker of the House out there trading, and her husband making millions and millions of dollars a year, Mr. Hawley said.

Democrats are just as eager to contrast their position with Ms. Pelosis. They said her refusal in December to consider a stock trading ban Were a free-market economy, she said when asked about the push made the issue a cause clbre.

The speaker, I dont want to directly call her out, but handfuls of members have put dozens and dozens of years here. They come at this from a different time and a different perspective, said Ms. Stevens, who has found herself almost certainly facing another Democrat, Andy Levin, in the upcoming House primaries in redistricted Michigan. Both signed on to last weeks letter demanding action on a trading ban.

Democratic leaders remain leery. They argue that once Congress begins trying to regulate its own members out of investments, it is difficult to draw the line between what is permissible and what is not. If stock ownership is forbidden because it could create a conflict with legislating, would having student loan debt make it inappropriate for a member to press for loan relief? Would owning real estate confer an improper personal interest in environmental or land-use policy?

Mr. Roy allowed that there were complexities, but, he said, a line had to be drawn.

If youre talking about dirt, well, are you talking about your family farm or are you engaging in thousands of real estate transactions? he asked. Are you buying and selling and engaging in commercial real estate transactions development while youre in Congress? There are limits to what were supposed to do.

Drew Hammill, Ms. Pelosis deputy chief of staff, said the speaker had asked Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Committee on House Administration, to examine an array of proposals to regulate lawmakers trading, including a ban on owning stocks. Ms. Lofgren is also looking at increasing penalties for unacceptable noncompliance with the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a 2012 law that mandates that lawmakers disclose their stock trading, a step he said Ms. Pelosi supports.

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Democrats Break With Leaders Over Congressional Stock Trading - The New York Times

Residents wait in line to vote outside of the Tippecanoe branch library on Oct. 20, 2020, in Milwaukee, Wis. Minimum standards for access to in-person early voting are one reform that both Republicans and Democrats have backed. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption

Residents wait in line to vote outside of the Tippecanoe branch library on Oct. 20, 2020, in Milwaukee, Wis. Minimum standards for access to in-person early voting are one reform that both Republicans and Democrats have backed.

Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called a targeted effort by some senators to reform the election certification process that former President Donald Trump attempted to hijack on Jan. 6, 2021, "unacceptably insufficient and even offensive."

Schumer wanted to go bigger.

He wanted to focus on much more expansive voting rights legislation, known as the Freedom to Vote Act, which would have overhauled essentially everything about the American election system: when and where Americans could cast a ballot, how they contribute to political campaigns and how states draw their political lines.

The proposal was trimmed down from an even larger elections bill, but it was still so massive that many election experts and even some Democrats privately say they never actually expected it to pass.

Then it failed.

Democrats in Congress haven't made it clear what they might pursue next, but experts see at least two paths toward a more piecemeal approach to putting in some guardrails around elections in the U.S.

The option gaining momentum recently is an update to the aforementioned rules around presidential election certification, known as the Electoral Count Act.

The law has been derided as poorly written and vague for decades, and its lack of clarity led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters falsely believed Vice President Mike Pence had more power over the certification of Electoral College votes submitted by the states than he actually did.

A bipartisan group of senators has been meeting to discuss potential revisions to the law, and there are indications that Schumer's opposition to it may be softening since the larger Democratic effort on voting rights failed.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California-Irvine, said that he feels the voting reforms in the Freedom to Vote Act are necessary too, but Congress would be right to prioritize the ECA and other laws meant to prevent subversion of the results of a presidential election.

"As much as one might be concerned about voter suppression and I've written two books on the subject, I'm very concerned about it I put the concern about election subversion even higher," Hasen said. "If you don't have a system where votes are fairly counted, you don't have a democracy at all."

The bipartisan group of senators looking at changing the law is working in smaller groups focused on a number of different aspects of voting reform, according to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who spoke to reporters Monday night after the group met on Capitol Hill.

Each of the smaller groups has a Democrat and Republican co-chair, Collins said, and they are focused on protecting election workers and potential new funding for election administration, in addition to updating the ECA. But she made it clear she thinks whatever legislation that comes from the group will not look anything like the Freedom to Vote Act.

"My goal is to have a bipartisan bill that can secure 60 or more votes in the Senate," she said. "If we re-litigate issues that have already been rejected by the Senate, then I think it would be very difficult for us to reach the 60-vote margin."

The bipartisan group of 16 senators, which includes nine Republicans, is set to meet again on Friday and could start writing text for their proposal in the coming days or weeks. The GOP support is key, since Democrats would need 10 Republicans in agreement to pass a measure in the Senate.

"This group is full of members of the Senate that have experience in getting bipartisan bills to the floor of the Senate. So maybe this group will be more successful," said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the group.

On Tuesday, a group of key Democratic senators also separately released their own potential draft update to the ECA. In some cases, the plan by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Angus King, I-Maine, mirrors proposals that were part of a House Administration Committee staff report released last month.

For example, it says that for an objection to a state's election results to be raised before Congress, the current threshold of only needing one member from each chamber should be raised. Rather, the Senate Democratic proposal, like the House staff report, suggests that one-third of each chamber should have to object. Both Democratic plans also say objections should be subject to a vote by a supermajority not a simple majority in both the House and Senate.

"We stand ready to share the knowledge we have accumulated with our colleagues from both parties and look forward to contributing to a strong, bipartisan effort aimed at resolving this issue and strengthening our democracy," Durbin, Klobuchar and King said in a statement on Tuesday.

King and several members of the bipartisan group agreed they see a potential to work together.

"I'm going to work with anybody who wants to work on the issue," King said.

Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another member of bipartisan group, says the various efforts signal momentum.

"I think what that telegraphs is that this is important and it's something that we can move through on a bipartisan basis," Murkowski said.

The level of bipartisan engagement on the ECA never coalesced around the other voting rights reforms Democrats had hoped would come from this Congress, which have grown more urgent as some states across the country passed laws last year restricting voting access.

Republicans have often said they have no interest in federalizing the nuts and bolts of election infrastructure, so mandating things like automatic voter registration or no-excuse absentee voting was a nonstarter.

But Matthew Weil thinks there is another way.

Weil leads the elections project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which recently released a report detailing what it sees as an "achievable" set of reforms for Congress to focus on.

"Both parties have prioritized elections to their voters," said Weil. "Democrats have been spending a lot of time talking about voter suppression and voters from the Republican Party are hearing that our election system is completely insecure."

BPC's proposal would address both concerns, Weil says, meaning there's a way for politicians to sell it to their voters no matter their affiliation.

Importantly, the BPC report does not argue for federal mandates, but instead argues for an incentivization structure where federal funding would be tied to whether states meet minimum accessibility and security standards such as:

Nine states that range across the political spectrum either currently already meet all of the report's minimum standards or meet all but one. Both Colorado and Georgia meet all of the proposed minimum standards for instance, even though Colorado is a vote-by-mail state and Georgia leans more heavily on in-person voting.

Because of the incentive structure, the proposal also might be an easier sell to Republicans like Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who worry about federal overreach. LaRose staunchly opposed the Freedom to Vote Act, calling it a power grab on the part of Democrats.

But in an interview with NPR recently, LaRose said he had read the BPC report and that he could see supporting similar legislation. Ohio already complies with more than 80% of the report's standards.

Weil, of the BPC, sees parallels to 2002 when Congress passed a bipartisan set of election reforms in the shadow of the 2000 presidential election, one of the closest and most contentious in modern history.

"Both parties had incentives to do something about the elections process," Weil said. "I think I see some of those same possibilities now."

NPR's Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.

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There are election reforms that both Democrats and Republicans seem to like - NPR

Introduction

As President Biden begins his second year in office and the battle for control of Congress in 2022 heats up, Democrats find themselves in a deep hole. Early in Bidens administration, 55% of Americans approved of his performance; today, his job approval has fallen to 42%. Polls conducted during the past three weeks show Democrats trailing Republicans by an average of 4 percentage points in the aggregate vote for the House of Representatives.[1]

This disadvantage in the generic House vote is even more significant than it appears. Because Democratic votes are distributed less efficiently among congressional districts than are Republican votes, Democrats need an edge of at least 2.5 percentage points to retain control. In 2016, a Republican advantage of just 1 percentage point translated into a 47-seat House majority. In 2012, a 1-point Democratic popular vote advantage left Republicans with a 33-seat majority. By contrast, it took a massive 8.6 percentage popular vote victory to give Democrats a comparable 36-seat majority in 2018.

Contrary to early expectations, the redistricting process after the 2020 Census is likely to leave the Houses existing partisan tilt about where it is now. But the parties have pursued different strategies. While Republicans have focused on making their seats safer, Democrats have sought to increase the number of districts where they have a reasonable chance of winning. This strategy will increase Democratic gains when the popular vote balance is favorable to them, but at the cost of increasing their losses when the vote turns against them. In these circumstances, the Republicans current 4-point edge in the generic House vote would likely produce a massive seat swing in their direction.

There is a strong relationship between President Bidens public standing and Democrats prospects in the forthcoming midterm elections. A recent study found that in this era of polarized and nationalized politics, a presidents job approval does more to influence midterms than does any other factor. Another analysis shows that Bidens low job approval in swing states is weakening Democratic candidates for the Senate. Unless Biden can move his approval from the low to the high-40s, Democrats have virtually no chance of retaining their House majority or of continuing to control the Senate.

Voters have downgraded their evaluation of the presidents performance across the board, but his losses on two key issues that were key to his campaigndealing with the pandemic and bringing the country togetherhave been especially steep.

To understand what it would take for President Biden to improve his public standing, lets examine which voters have moved from approval to disapproval, and why. A recently released report from the Pew Research Center offers some answers.

In early 2021, when public approval for President Biden was at its peak, support among Independent voters who said they lean toward the Democrats stood at 88%, nearly as high as among voters who identify as Democrats (95%), and differences between strong and not-strong Democrats were insignificant. Since then, the gap between these groups has widened significantly. While the presidents ratings among Democrats have declined by 19 percentage points (from 95% to 76%), they have declined by 32 percentage points among Leaners, and a 22-point gap has opened between those who say they are strong and not strong Democrats.

Data provided by Pew show a strong correlation between these shifts and ideological differences among Democratic support groups. Simply put, strong Democrats, a group dominated by liberals, continue to approve of the presidents performance much more than do not-strong Democrats and Democratic leaners, who have strong majorities of moderate and conservative voters. Liberals make up 56% of strong Democrats, compared to just 40% of not-strong Democrats and 36% of Independents who lean toward the Democrats.

Other survey data supports Pews findings. For example, compare two polls conducted by the Economist and YouGov, the first in mid-March of 2021, the second in the third week of January 2022. Among all voters, President Bidens job approval has declined by 15 points. But it has declined by 21 points among Independents and 22 points among moderates.

A Gallup survey, which examined the impact of partisanship but not ideology, found that the decline in Bidens personal ratings was driven mainly by shifts among Independents.

A key reason for these shiftsmoderates and Independents now view President Biden as less moderate and more liberal than they did at the beginning of his administration. When asked to place Biden on the ideological spectrum from very liberal to very conservative, heres what they said:

During this period, moreover, the share of these voters who saw Biden as very liberal rose by 6 percentage points among both moderates and liberals.

While President Biden has suffered reverses across the board, he has lost more ground among voters in the center of the electorate than on the left. If he is to regain support among moderates and Independents, he must work harder to overcome their objections to the way he has positioned himself during his first year in officeincluding their perception that he has governed farther to the left than they expected when they voted for him in 2020.

[1] Source: authors calculation based on polls conducted January 12-26, 2022.

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Can President Biden and the Democrats get out of the hole? - Brookings Institution