The midway point of the 2019 legislative session offers the opportunity to examine the direction that Concord is taking and the impact it will have on people’s lives.
JEB BRADLEY
There has been bipartisan work in the Senate on affordable housing and reimbursement for Medicaid health-care providers as well as better protection for children from abuse and neglect building upon Governor Sununu’s leadership and initiative.
Needed upgrades to New Hampshire’s mental health system has mixed results thus far.
In the prior budget Governor Sununu and many others worked for increased resources. The governor’s 2019 Ten-Year Mental Health Plan has garnered wide support. With bipartisan support, the Senate adopted the plan’s recommendations for more community resources and treatment beds in hospitals.
However, Gov. Sununu also proposed building a forensic psychiatric hospital for mental health patients currently housed at the State Prison.
I sponsored this plan in SB 291.
Unfortunately, House Democrats rejected this hospital despite recognition that mental health patients should not be held in a prison.
My Democratic Senate colleagues claim to support this initiative, but voted to table it rather than persuade the House to act responsibly. The governor’s mental health plan is comprehensive, but implementing some portions of it while rejecting others will not resolve the mental health crisis.
A strong economy is another crucial issue where senators are extremely divided.
Our state enjoys among the lowest unemployment and poverty rates in the nation. Paychecks are growing.
We have among the highest median family income in the nation and the strong economy is producing record revenue for state coffers.
This economy did not happen by accident. Coming out of the last recession in 2010, we faced an $800 million budget deficit despite numerous new or higher taxes including the infamous LLC Tax — so odious it was repealed.
Difficult decisions had to be made prioritizing spending.
New Hampshire’s cost of doing business had to become more competitive. Worker’s compensation reform lowered costs. We gradually reduced New Hampshire’s 48th highest in the nation business taxes.
In 2019 the economic results speak for themselves: the New Hampshire economy is one of the nation’s best.
Despite many who warned lower business taxes would blow a hole in the budget — the opposite occurred — unprecedented surpluses and large deposits into the Rainy-Day Fund.
Now however, our economic success is at risk due to policies being pushed by my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate.
In just three months alone they have voted for a $155 million income tax to pay for a mandatory paid family leave program, higher business taxes of $45 million and a capital gains tax of $150 million.
That will cost businesses and taxpayers $700 million dollars in the next budget.
And that’s just for starters.
My Democratic colleagues have supported measures that would increase worker’s compensation costs, increase the unemployment insurance tax, dramatically increase the minimum wage and make for higher costs of road construction and maintenance projects through “prevailing wages.”
They voted for legislation that makes it harder for a business to ascertain a prospective employee’s criminal record, and even proposed a measure that would dictate that a business announce a work schedule two weeks in advance — despite circumstances that could easily change.
These policies matter and they are taking New Hampshire backward to a time of higher taxes on job producers, large deficits, accounting gimmicks, desperation sale of state assets, bonding expenses previously bonded, and raiding of dedicated funds.
My Democratic colleagues claim to want an economy that “works for everyone” and yet they are advocating policies that will raise costs and increase regulations on employers, hampering higher paychecks and hindering further job growth.
New Hampshire has been there and done that — it didn’t work.
One example of how a competitive tax policy is critical for New Hampshire’s future can be found in Manchester at the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) whose driving force is Dean Kamen.
ARMI’s purpose is to generate human tissue and eventually human organs which would be phenomenal life-saving technology.
According to a recent article in the Union Leader, Kamen said “the 2018 law granting a 10-year tax holiday to ARMI investor companies has helped attract $200 million of private investment from 132 participating members on top of $80 million of federal grants.”
I was proud to sponsor that legislation because it’s important that Dean Kamen succeed — in New Hampshire!!
My Democratic colleagues would do well to learn the lesson of pro-jobs and pro-paycheck policies that work, such as ARMI, rather than rail about tax breaks for out-of-state corporations which continues to be their mantra.
New Hampshire can’t love jobs and then disparage job creators.
The result will once again be an economy that works for no one.
This is what is at risk in Concord.
