CT Democrats looking to Biden's help to fight virus, build economy
Ken Dixon Some wept tears, some felt palpable relief. After four of disruption in the federal government and a year of denial in the COVID pandemic, Connecticut’s top elected Democrats called President Joe Biden the man for the moment.
And the cause of the moment, they said Wednesday, is to beat back the virus and repair the damage it has cause the nation’s economy and social fabric.
Gov. Ned Lamont, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, state Attorney General William Tong and Secretary of the State Denise Merrill told reporters that Biden’s inauguration puts on-track the next $1.9-trillion aid plan, including up to $400 billion for state and local governments. They hailed Biden’s flurry of new executive orders to reverse former President Donald Trump’s penchant for deregulation and denial of climate change.
“The federal government is going to become an active partner and a leader,” Blumenthal said. “We have a president, but we also have the Democratic Congress that will help lead and support states in a way that frankly, simply, has been absent the last four years.”
Connecticut is well positioned to fare well under the Biden administration. In addition to COVID-related bailout money and more for infrastructure, the elected leaders said they expect that full IRS deductions for state and local taxes will be returned. Trump’s tax reform of 2017 limited deductions to $10,000 for state and local taxes, costing residents of high-tax Connecticut billions of dollars — and prompting Northeast states to sue the federal government over the change.
During an hour-long Zoom news conference, DeLauro and Blumenthal stressed the need to take the recent second impeachment of Donald Trump to a trial in the Senate that could bar him from holding office in the future. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time,” DeLauro said of Congress’s ability to hold a Trump trial in the Senate while preparing the next historic round of pandemic relief by late February.
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we get this relief and we move it and we do it as quickly as we can,” DeLauro, the new chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. “Everybody was left behind for the last four years. It is now our opportunity to move forward.”
Blumenthal noted that now-U.S. Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in recent days admitted that Trump provoked the Jan. 6 mob assault, which became “an act of domestic terrorism,” indicating that there might be enough support in the Senate to convict Trump in a trial. “The evidence is pretty open and shut,” Blumenthal said. “We should be agreeing on the severity of the law-breaking here and as a matter of morality, the wrong things done by Donald Trump.”
“This is a fresh start and that’s really important,” Lamont said. “Some consistency and support from Washington as a real partner will make a big difference.”
Lamont is sure that his old friend, the new president, will push an important relief agenda that will help Connecticut, and hopes it would include an infusion of funding for the state’s unemployment trust fund. He agreed that reviving the deductibility of state and local taxes will be on Biden’s agenda.
“It was a punitive step directed at blue states and it should be reversed in the interest of fairness, but also I think and I hope that Joe Biden will make an effort to reverse it because it is economically inhibiting to recovery in those major states, New York New Jersey, Connecticut, California and others that are at the heart of economic revival.”
“Every family in the country is hurting,” DeLauro said.
“I think Joe Biden’s plan to revive the economy, to provide stimulus payments, aid for small businesses, unemployment insurance, assistance to state and local governments, maybe most-important a massive, major call to action on distributing vaccine” will succeed, Blumenthal said.
“We have a closely divided Senate,” Blumenthal said. “I think we ought to use every possible tool or method at our disposal, because the real needs have to be met. The hurt and pain that all of us see in Connecticut: the lines of people at the food bank, the number of people seeking vaccines and testing, the small business owners struggling to keep their doors open, families trying to put food on the table. We’re going to have real leadership from the White House.”
Merrill said she found herself crying during the televised inaugural ceremony on the steps of the Capitol, where two weeks earlier rioters broke into the building in a misguided attempt to stop the balloting of the Electoral College. “I felt an enormous amount of relief, that we were finally here, that we had a decent wonderful person as our new president,” she said.
Tong said he was most moved by the moment of silence Biden asked for, to honor the nation’s 400,000 dead in the pandemic. “As an Asian-America, this is a really important moment and as the son of immigrants this was an urgent day that we get here, so we can resume being and feeling like Americans,” Tong said. “There is so much work to do. There is so much work to undo frankly, the damage that’s been done over the last four years.”
How much federal funding will each state DOT receive?
That number is a part of nearly $10 billion total earmarked for transportation spending, and experts say the funds are much needed.
“Since the early response to the pandemic, state DOTs have faced severe losses in state transportation revenues as vehicle travel declined,” Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said in a statement. “This COVID relief bill enables state DOTs to stay on track and support the efficient movement of critical goods and services as they maintain their transportation systems.”
The Federal Highway Administration must apportion the funds for state DOTs within 30 days of the bill’s enactment, according to AASHTO. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law Dec. 27. Each state’s portion will be based on the state’s share of obligation limitations within the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation or FAST Act, according to AASHTO.
Here is a sortable look at how much money each state will receive from the COVID-19 relief measure:
Washington, D.C., will receive the least amount of funding ($39 million), although among states, the bottom three amounts are for small states: New Hampshire ($41 million), Hawaii ($42 million) and Delaware ($42 million).
State DOTs can use the relief money to fund Surface Transportation Block Grant-eligible projects, preventive and routine maintenance, operations, employee and contractor salaries, debt service and availability payments and coverage for other revenue losses, according to AASHTO. Additionally, the relief funds — which will be available until Sept. 30, 2024 — could be transferred to public tolling and ferry agencies for all of the same costs as state DOTs.
Of the remaining funds for transportation, $115 million will go to the Tribal Transportation Program, $36 million to the Puerto Rico Highway Program, and $9 million to the Territorial Highway Program, according to ForConstructionPros.