About the Fiscal Policy Center
Key Issues | Key publications & testimony | Related resources
About the Fiscal Policy Center
Over the last two decades, Connecticut Voices for Children has established itself as both a go-to policy resource for state officials, service providers, advocates, and residents and as a champion for fiscal policies that expand opportunity for every child in Connecticut. We offer trusted data, national best practices, and a consistent focus on ensuring Connecticut’s children, particularly the most vulnerable, have a voice in how the state budget allocates our shared resources.
Now, in response to the state’s growing budget challenges, Connecticut Voices is expanding its fiscal policy work by establishing the Fiscal Policy Center, led by Senior Policy Fellow Wade Gibson. As part of this initiative, Connecticut Voices is working to double our fiscal policy team from two to four full-time staff, so that we can conduct and disseminate timely fiscal policy research that is relevant to the policy debates happening in the state capital.
By establishing the Fiscal Policy Center, we are able to engage more naturally and forcefully in fiscal policy matters beyond those traditionally seen as children’s issues. Indeed, as Connecticut’s budgetary challenges deepen, all fiscal policy becomes children’s policy: allowing the tax base to erode or underfunding infrastructure has real ramifications for our children’s future. Connecticut Voices’ new Fiscal Policy Center is ideally positioned to make those arguments and provide practical solutions.
- Will our children have a fair shot at prosperity, the same we did? Our children face uncertain economic prospects and daunting long-term liabilities, yet it is often their programs on the chopping block, the very ones that will equip them to shoulder these burdens and thrive in their careers and with their families.
- Investing in children’s programs is not just about fairness but economic good sense. Early interventions like quality preschool and children’s health yield impressive returns for all of society. They help ensure our children lead successful, productive, healthy lives and avoid crime and joblessness and chronic health conditions that cost everyone in Connecticut.
- Yet in the face of falling state revenues, rising health costs, and other fiscal pressures, the share of the state budget committed to education has fallen over 20%. If we allocated the state’s resources like we did 20 years ago, Connecticut would have over $1 billion more each year to invest in educating our children.
- Meanwhile, child poverty in Connecticut has increased almost 50% since 2001. Approximately 120,000 Connecticut children—1 in 7—live in families with incomes under the Federal Poverty Line.
- Children’s programs face considerable threats in the federal budget as well. The Urban Institute recently projected federal direct spending and tax breaks for children—already just 3% of national economic output—would fall to 2.3% over the next 10 years. And the United States already suffers some of the highest rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, and illiteracy of any advanced country.
- Connecticut’s children, especially our most vulnerable, need a voice in state and federal budget debates.
Key budget and tax publications & legislative testimony
- Budget Challenges Facing Connecticut
- Building an Adequate, Fair, and Accountable 21st Century Revenue System
- The Governor's Proposed Fiscal Year 2014-15 Budget: The Impact on Children
- Shifting Priorities: Trends in State Appropriations, 1992-2012
- Taking Stock: Four Decades of State Revenues, Expenditures, and Deficits
- Reality Check: Who Pays Taxes in Connecticut?
- Connecticut's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund: A Splintering Work Support
- To Steer Course out of Downturn, Connecticut Needs More Hands on Deck
- Are CT Business Tax Credits Creating Jobs? Would We Know if They Weren't?
- Our legislative testimony on budget and tax issues
- Our legislative agenda
