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OTTAWA - With the help of the NDP, Justin Trudeau's minority Liberal government has survived the last of three confidence votes on its massive budget.

The House of Commons approved Monday the government's general budgetary policy by a vote of 178-157.

Liberals were joined by New Democrat MPs in voting for the budget, in accordance with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh's vow not to trigger an election in the midst of a deadly third wave of COVID-19.

Conservative, Bloc Quebecois and Green MPs voted against the budget.

Votes on the budget are considered confidence matters; had all opposition parties voted against it, the government would have fallen, plunging the country into an election.

The government survived two other confidence votes on the budget last week, on Conservative and Bloc Quebecois amendments to the budget motion.

The budget, introduced last week, commits just over $100 billion in new spending to stimulate the economic recovery, on top of an unprecedented, pandemic-induced deficit of $354 billion in the 2020-21 fiscal year.

The government must eventually introduce a budget implementation bill, which will also be a matter of confidence.

Prime Minister Trudeau last week insisted the big-spending budget is not a launching pad for an election. He would not rule out an election this year, noting that he leads a minority government and saying it will be up to Parliament to decide when the election is.

While that sounded like Trudeau doesn't intend to pull the plug himself on his government, it didn't preclude the possibility that the Liberals could try to orchestrate their defeat at the hands of opposition parties. Nor did it preclude the possibility that Trudeau could at some point claim that a dysfunctional minority Parliament requires him to seek a majority mandate.

Some Liberal insiders believe Trudeau may pull the plug this summer, provided that the pandemic is relatively under control and vaccines are rolling out smoothly.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2021.

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No election yet as Liberal minority government survives third budget confidence vote - CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

OTTAWA -- Justin Trudeau's minority Liberal government has survived the second of three confidence votes on the massive federal budget.

A Conservative amendment was defeated by a vote of 213-120, with Liberals, Bloc Quebecois, New Democrat and Green MPs all voting against it.

The amendment called for the budget to be revised because, the Conservatives claimed, it will add "over half a trillion dollars in new debt that can only be paid through higher job-killing taxes," including more than $100 billion in new spending that the Conservatives dubbed "a re-election fund."

On Wednesday, a Bloc Quebecois sub-amendment was also easily defeated.

The government had informed opposition parties that it would consider both votes to be matters of confidence, meaning the government would fall if either of them passed.

A third opportunity to pass judgment on the budget comes Monday, when the House of Commons will vote on the main motion to approve the government's general budgetary policy.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has promised that his party will prop up the minority government on all budget votes to avoid triggering an election in the midst of a deadly third wave of COVID-19.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 22, 2021.

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Minority Liberal government survives second of three confidence votes on budget - CTV News

Tasmanian Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein is gambling on an early election to cash in on his governments popularity due to its management of the COVID pandemic. It is a reasonable strategy, given how voters in Queensland and Western Australia have rewarded their governments in recent months.

Gutwein announced the May 1 election on March 26 a year earlier than it is due. This was possible because, while Tasmania has a four-year maximum term, it does not have a fixed term, unlike all other states and territories.

In 2018 the Liberals, under then-Premier Will Hodgman, were returned to government with a bare majority of 13 of the 25 members of the lower house. Gutwein took over the premiership following Hodgmans resignation in January 2020.

Over the past three years, the majority government has at times looked shaky. This was typified by maverick Liberal Clark MP Sue Hickey winning the speakership ballot with the support of Labor and the Greens against her partys candidate. She has since voted against government legislation and policy on a number of policy and social reform issues.

Five days before calling the election Gutwein informed Hickey she would not get Liberal re-endorsement for the next election. She resigned from the party, putting the government into minority.

Having engineered a minority government and, despite written assurances from Hickey and ex-Labor, independent MP Madeleine Ogilvie on confidence and supply, Gutwein then called the election to secure stable majority government. His reasoning was that this would keep Tasmania in safe hands for ongoing management of COVID.

Read more: Morrison's ratings take a hit in Newspoll as Coalition notionally loses a seat in redistribution

A few days later, Ogilvie was endorsed as a Liberal candidate for Clark. This underlined the artificiality of the minority government argument.

Under Tasmanias Hare-Clark proportional electoral system, five members are elected to each of five multi-member seats. These are Bass in the north, Braddon in the north west, Clark and Franklin in the greater Hobart and southern region, and the sprawling Lyons across the middle of the state.

Going into this election, the Liberals had 12 seats, Labor nine, Tasmanian Greens two and there were two independents.

In March 2020, before the pandemic, Labor leader Rebecca White was matching first Hodgman and then Gutwein as preferred premier.

However, that changed after Gutwein declared a state of emergency and the toughest border restrictions in Australia.

Like his counterparts in Queensland and WA, the hard-line stance was widely interpreted as keeping the state safe. Gutwein polled as high as 70% as preferred premier in opinion polls throughout 2020.

The election announcement caught Labor unprepared. The start of its campaign was sidetracked by factional battles over preselection of high-profile Kingborough Mayor Dean Winter for the seat of Franklin. It also had to deal with the resignation of state ALP president Ben McGregor from the campaign over crude text messages he sent to a female colleague some years ago.

The Liberals also have had their share of problems. Franklin candidate Dean Ewington was forced to resign when it was revealed he had attended anti-lockdown rallies against Gutweins policy. Ex-minister and now Braddon candidate Adam Brooks also faces police charges over alleged contraventions of gun storage law.

Tasmania has has three minority governments in the modern era. These are the 1989 Labor-Green Accord government, the 1996 Liberal minority government and the 2010 Labor-Green quasi-coalition government. In each case voters punished the major governing party at the following election.

Consequently, the prospect of a hung parliament is always a central election issue in this state. Both Labor and the Liberals have pledged to govern in majority or not at all. However, in their one campaign debate to date, both Gutwein and White indicated they would resign the leadership rather than lead a minority government. This seems to leave open the door for their replacements to take up negotiations to form government.

Federal issues and federal political leaders have had a minimal impact on the Tasmanian election. So far, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has not visited the state during the campaign, even for the Liberal campaign launch. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has visited twice, including for Labors launch.

While Tasmanias economy has held up surprisingly well during the pandemic due in no small part to Commonwealth JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments the end of those payments is likely to have a negative impact on the states economy. Some have pointed to this as an underlying reason for going to an election early.

Concerns about delays to the roll-out of COVID vaccinations and the possible distraction from the key state Liberal campaign theme of management of the pandemic may be another reason for keeping federal ministers away.

Read more: WA election could be historical Labor landslide, but party with less than 1% vote may win upper house seat

For its part, Labor has campaigned on state Liberal failure to reduce hospital and housing waiting lists and the lack of action on a range of key infrastructure development promises made at the 2018 election. The opposition has also raised concerns about future budget spending cuts to fund high-cost COVID economic stimulus measures, TAFE privatisation and delays in replacing the Spirit of Tasmania ferries, which are vital for interstate transport, tourism and freight.

The Greens and key high-profile independent candidates such as Hickey and popular Glenorchy Mayor Kristie Johnston in Clark have raised concerns about government secrecy, ministerial accountability and the states weak laws on political donations and, associated with that, poker machine licensing reforms.

There have been no public political opinion polls so far during this campaign. However, successive surveys by Tasmanian pollsters EMRS throughout 2020 placed the Liberals as likely to win more than 52% of the vote state-wide.

Since, historically, a party winning anything over 48% is likely to secure majority government in Tasmania, if those polls are reflected in the election outcome on May 1, another majority Liberal government seems likely.

Continued here:
As Tasmanians head to the polls, Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein hopes to cash in on COVID management - The Conversation AU

The Biden administration is on a massive spending spree. Connecticut progressives want to follow suit. Last week, Biden released a trial balloon proposing how to pay for his spree. Unsurprisingly, the idea is massive tax increases for corporations and upper-income individuals, including a near doubling of the top capital gains tax rate from 23.8% to 43.8%.

Connecticuts progressives have proposed more than a billion dollars of new spending, primarily on vague social justice goals (building wealth in underserved communities and reducing income inequality), all to be funded by new taxes imposed exclusively upon upper-income taxpayers, including a capital gains tax surcharge.

A largely unaccountable new off-budget vehicle, the Connecticut Equitable Investment Fund, is to carry out the new spending and collect the new taxes, which, therefore, are to be exempt from budget restraints meant to prevent unaffordable spending.

The new federal taxes will render new state taxes unnecessary and counterproductive unnecessary, because capital gains tax increases always cause high-income taxpayers to take every possible gain before the higher rates take effect. This results in a one-time surge in federal revenue and in state revenue in any state which taxes capital gains, whether as part of regular taxable income, as in Connecticut now, or with a separate tax. Connecticut will get much of the money progressives want without imposing additional taxes they seek.

New Connecticut taxes on the wealthy would be counterproductive. The federal tax hikes will concentrate the minds of high-income individuals who will focus on ways to reduce their taxes, with a move to a lower-tax state an obvious option.

Connecticut Democrats have imposed a relentless parade of annual tax increases that have cumulated into a significant tax bite. Already, the state has suffered significant net outmigration of higher income citizens and major businesses, primarily to distant states with lower taxes and more business-friendly environments.

Gov. Ned Lamont understands this and has said he would veto proposed new spending and taxes. However, his hands arent clean. He has resurrected his moribund highway toll proposal in the form of a new truck mileage tax and has agreed to new taxes on marijuana and online gambling. These initiatives are largely regressive. Progressives are likely to demand progressive taxation in return.

All of this taxation ignores the states fundamental fiscal problem: overgenerous and unsustainable state employee compensation, which is consuming more of the budget and squeezing out state services.

The massive influx of federal assistance wont solve this problem. Even the latest round has been spent already: $1.8 billion of the $2.6 billion is merely financing the existing budget, replacing, dollar for dollar, a previously planned draw-down from the Budget Reserve Fund. Another $250 million will go to COVID testing. Only $75 million will remain available in three years.

Progressive Democrats have recognized this and have created the off-budget Equitable Fund (CEIF). Going off-budget exempts CEIF from various budget restraints, or caps in particular, the volatility cap. The caps serve to divert money away from state services and send it, first, to the Budget Reserve Fund, and then into the state employee and teacher pension funds.

This fiscal year $427 million was deposited into the pension funds. Next year $410 million will be deposited.

The budget caps were adopted to achieve fiscal stability in a bipartisan effort in 2017. However, they have done nothing to limit state employee compensation. Perversely, the caps have done the opposite, channeling funds into the woefully underfunded pension fund, thereby, relieving pressure to scale back compensation.

The progressive authors of the CEIF are right to try to interrupt this diversion of money. However, a better solution would be to maintain the caps but direct the money from the BRF to broader purposes for example, transportation, which would eliminate the need for Lamonts new truck mileage tax. Massively overgenerous state employee compensation should simply be reduced to national average levels for both active and retired state employees.

One can understand the frustration of progressives who see budget caps diverting funds to supposed allies, state employees, who are making out like bandits while their constituents see service cutbacks.

It is time to address unfair state employee compensation. To ignore it and, instead, to raise taxes and spending will backfire as taxpayers leave the state, tax receipts ultimately decline, and service cuts become unavoidable.

Red Jahncke is a freelance columnist based in Connecticut.

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Red Jahncke: State's progressives should jump off the Biden bandwagon - Journal Inquirer

Progressives have a message for President Biden, and Wednesday night they delivered it in a formal response to his first address to Congress.

Progressives have a message for President Biden, and Wednesday night they delivered it in a formal response to hisfirst address to Congress.

"We've always said that the election of Joe Biden is the door but not the destination," says Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party.

The Working Families Party, a prominent left-leaning group, tapped Congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York to deliver its response.

The move is unusual because Bowman is a member of the president's own party. Traditionally, the opposition party offers a response when the president delivers a speech to Congress and it's usually critical.

But the point of Bowman's speech wasn't to criticize the president or open a rift between the Democratic Party. It's goal was to complement the president's speech and highlight the kinds of action the left wants to see from the White House moving forward.

"A combination of affirming the things that we hear Joe Biden say that we align with and then going a step further towards how we actually get there," explains Mitchell.

For decades, the party without control of the White House has delivered a rebuttal of presidential addresses. When the president is a Democrat, the response is usually given by a Republican, and vice versa.

This year was no different, with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina delivering the GOP's rebuttal.

The proliferation of social media has led other party leaders to jump in the game and offer their own responses via live-stream. The practice has been embraced by tea party groups to major political figures, like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The Working Families Party, for one, started delivering its own response separate from the Democratic Party during the Trump administration. It decided to continue the tradition with the Biden administration.

"It's about inspiring everyday people to take up the mantle of change," Mitchell tells Newsy of the progressive response.

Last year, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts spoke on behalf of the Working Families Party. In 2019, it was delivered by Wisconsin's Lieutenant Governor, Mandela Barnes. And Donna Edwards, the former Maryland congresswoman, did it in 2018.

Top lawmakers and activists on the Left are generally happy with the Biden administration so far.

"President Biden has definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said of the president's relationship with progressives earlier this week.

But they credit some of that goodwill to their dedication to holding him accountable and making sure their voices are heard at the White House.

And the Working Families Party says Bowman was the right person to convey that message.

"Congressman Bowman is a regular person," explains Mitchell. "He's an educator that grew up in his district, that understands in a very real way the contradictions and challenges that everyday working class people are trying to deal with."

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Progressives Respond To President Biden's First Address To Congress - Newsy