Even in deep blue Connecticut—one of just six states in the country where Democrats control both halves of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion right now—the suggestion of a $1.8 billion tax increase has incited a political revolution.
Three Senate Democrats and five Democrats in the state House bailed on a plan to impose an array of new taxes, including a 75 percent wholesale tax on electronic cigarettes and other vaping products that likely would have killed dozens of small businesses in the state. The budget plan proposed by Gov. Dannel Malloy also would have hiked taxes on cellphone bills, vacation homes, hospitals, cigarettes, hotel rooms, ride-sharing services, nonprescription drugs, and fantasy sports gaming, the Hartford Courant reported.
Coming on the heels of two of the largest tax increases in state history—lawmakers raised taxes by $1.5 billion in 2011 and then hiked them by another $1.2 billion in 2015—seems to have been too much to ask.