Yankee Institute (YI) is calling on Gov. Ned Lamont and the General Assembly to find money for their priorities by reducing government spending on items like illegal immigration — which has cost the state $1.3 billion — rather than busting the 2017 bipartisan fiscal guardrails.
According to a 2023 Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) report, Connecticut is hosting an estimated 167,000 illegal migrants — or 225,000 including children — who receive services including medical care, in-state tuition, incarceration, legal services, sheltering, and welfare.
Gov. Lamont and others have disputed the number, but the state government cannot provide any estimate of the costs it disburses on illegal immigrants. When asked, the Office and Policy Management (OPM) told the press that quantifying the expenses “would take costly and time-consuming academic research to develop an accurate figure.”
YI President Carol Platt Liebau, who cited the $1.3 billion cost of illegal immigration to Connecticut’s taxpayers during an interview on “This Week in Connecticut,” criticized state leaders’ failure to inform state residents of the costs of illegal immigration. “How can state leaders dispute the numbers we have provided when they admit they haven’t even estimated the costs that illegal immigration imposes on people in our state legally?” Liebau asked.
Liebau also critiqued proposals to expand Husky Healthcare eligibility regardless of immigration status. “It is wrong to expect Connecticut taxpayers to fund additional benefits for illegal immigrants when their state officials can’t even tell them how much they’re already spending,” Liebau said. “This is especially true when some state leaders are demanding that we risk our children’s fiscal future by busting the bipartisan fiscal guardrails that were unanimously extended just two years ago.”
Liebau added, “That’s no way to run a lemonade stand, let alone a state government.”
Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails have led to the state paying down nearly $10 billion in pension debt, enacted the largest income tax cut in state history, and can save $7 billion over the next 25 years if they are kept intact.
Since 2017, the fiscal guardrails have reversed decades of pension underfunding, improving Connecticut’s creditworthiness and financial stability. The spending reforms have also saved more than $170 million since being enacted and freed more than $700 million to be budgeted for vital services, including services for which additional funding is currently being demanded.
Additionally, Connecticut has made moderate improvements in national rankings regarding its pension debt, moving from third-worst to sixth-worst in the country.
“Gov. Lamont has repeatedly said we have a long way to go in improving our financial standing, and he’s right,” Liebau said. “That’s why it makes no sense to insist we have ‘earned the opportunity’ to tinker with the guardrails. If the guardrails can be changed whenever they become too restrictive for government’s tastes, they’re not really guardrails — they’re simply ‘guard suggestions’.”
YI has provided a menu of reforms that would freeing up funds without breaking the fiscal guardrails:
- Connecticut spends $1.3 billion on services for illegal immigrants.
- State employees have received a 33% pay increase through step and annual raises over the past six years. If wages are frozen, Connecticut could save $360 million over the next two years.
- State employees pay only 2% of their medical bills, while the national average is 14%. This should be reconsidered.
- The state could also re-examine its film tax credit, which the left-leaning CT Voices for Children and Yankee Institute both see as an area to improve. In Fiscal Year 2023, Connecticut gave $112 million in tax credits.
