The last biennial budget Gov. Ned Lamont will propose before committing to reelection or retirement came with a speech Wednesday that looked back on Connecticut’s fiscal turnaround and ahead to the continuing challenge of relieving financial burdens on a struggling working class.
Lamont, 71, a Democrat who has governed from the political center on taxes and spending, invited legislators of both parties to celebrate their role in a string of budget surpluses unimagined when he took office six years ago, then outlined a path of continued prudence, tinged with pragmatism.
“For many years, governors would stand at this dais, confronted with a recession for which we were totally unprepared,” Lamont told lawmakers at midday. “Today, we are much better prepared to manage the unexpected — within reason — thanks to all of you.”
It was one of the last lines welcomed by House and Senate Republican minorities, whose leaders sat stone-faced as Democrats cheered Lamont’s willingness to accommodate at least some Democratic calls for higher spending — and his pointed resistance to President Donald J. Trump on immigration and diversity.
“Just between us, we have an equity and opportunity officer here in the state of Connecticut,” Lamont said, theatrically lowering his voice in acknowledgement of Trump’s promise to root out all efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion. “Talent is everywhere. Opportunities have got to be extended as well.”
Democrats, who hold huge majorities in the General Assembly and every statewide and congressional office, cheered.
Lamont’s major new initiative is $108.8 million in new funding over the biennium for child care and early education, as well as the creation of a “Universal Preschool Endowment” that he introduced as a means to deliver on a promise of affordable child care for everyone from the working poor to middle class.
Many of the targeted beneficiaries of the new early childhood spending are working-class families that soured on the Democratic Party during the 2024 presidential race. It promises universal free school breakfasts and, eventually, free preschool, school-year spaces to families making up to $100,000 and reduced costs for those earning up to $150,000.
“The Universal Preschool Endowment is at the heart of our affordability and opportunity agenda, giving our kids the best opportunity at the starting line of life, saving their parents thousands of dollars and giving them the freedom to get back to work,” Lamont said.
The speech offered more details than last month’s State of the State address, in which he largely handed the General Assembly a to-do list that oddly distanced him from the coming budget debate. But it nonetheless was constrained by his fiscal ideology and a spending cap that he recently called “sacrosanct.”
Lamont reiterated his strong belief in the spending cap, one of the fiscal guardrails that have curbed spending in a time of unprecedented surplus revenues, filling budget reserves to the maximum allowed by law and paying down pension debt that ballooned during decades of neglect.
“Our proposed budget is our best effort to stay true to our Connecticut values while continuing to focus on affordability and opportunity for all,” Lamont said. “It should be our seventh and eighth honestly balanced budget, which invests in the future without shortchanging the very real needs of today.”
[How does Connecticut pass its budget? We’ve outlined it here]
That assertion will be tested beginning Thursday, when the legislature’s Appropriations Committee starts its line-by-line, agency-by-agency review of the $27 billion in proposed spending for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and $28.2 billion for the following year.
Lamont said the fiscal discipline has “earned” him and lawmakers “the opportunity to rethink the volatility threshold” that has made billions in revenue from historically volatile sources off limits, swelling the budget reserves that the governor says should help the state navigate the turbulence rippling from Washington, D.C.
“Unlike other states, which are cutting back, our budget will increase by over $1 billion in each of the next two years, all the while making a transformative investment in early childhood education and another round of tax cuts,” he said.
His predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy, was hobbled by plunging revenues after the 2008 recession, which required Malloy to make spending cuts, demand employee concessions and increase taxes to keep Connecticut in the black. Malloy’s top fiscal official famously asserted the state appeared mired in a “permanent fiscal crisis.”
“We continue to move away from the days of the ‘permanent fiscal crisis,’ and by year end, we should have paid down $10 billion in pension debt, honoring our promise that pensions will be there when you retire — all while reducing the fixed costs, which were crowding out critical investments in our future,” Lamont said.
Neither domestic nor national politics were ignored in the speech.
“Our capital budget includes $500 million for new schools, our biggest increase in years,” Lamont said. “Just ask what those projects have meant to students in towns like Torrington, Trumbull, Thompson and New Britain.”
The first three communities offered alliteration, the last a subtle jab at Mayor Erin Stewart of New Britain, a Republican who recently mocked Lamont as she launched an exploratory campaign for governor. New Britain has enjoyed a renaissance during Stewart’s tenure, but portions were in cooperation with Lamont and Malloy.
The governor’s emphasis on early education and an effort to coax disconnected teens back to school set up his criticism of Trump’s mass deportation vow. He noted his budget will increase funding for a program that sends coaches, teachers or other trusted individuals to knock on the doors of truant children.
“Unfortunately, with so much media attention around ICE and mass deportation, some of our kids are staying home and missing school,” Lamont said. “Our door knockers now have another message at the door: ‘You are safe in our schools. Come back. We miss you.’”
Democrats applauded for nearly 45 seconds, the longest ovation of the day. Republicans sat in silence, some glowering.
“Personally, I believe the White House attacks on higher ed, including the temporary freezing of federal grants, is incredibly short-sighted and very damaging,” Lamont said.
Lamont shared his fears about the efforts of Elon Musk and his DOGE group, the Department of Government Efficiency, to curb federal funding and its impact on Medicaid, the state-and-federal program that provides health care to about one quarter of Connecticut residents.
“We have no idea how the feds will impact Medicaid costs. We’ve got the DOGE commission, and hopefully they’re going to root out fraud. That’s good,” Lamont said. “Or they may simply just cost-shift Medicaid expenses to the states. That’s bad. If all they do is cost shift, DOGE is just a dodge, which could cost our state hundreds of millions of dollars.”
He complained that the Trump administration’s intention to tie transportation funding to a state’s willingness to assist in detaining immigrants without legal status was vague.
“Of course, our cops round up the bad guys regardless of immigration status. We get the bad guys off the street, and we work with any federal authorities to keep us safe,” Lamont said. “We don’t waste time on the immigration status of speeders and shoplifters, and our teachers don’t ask the immigration status of their students. They’re pretty busy teaching.”
The line produced more one-sided applause.
House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, and Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, said the Republican hostility was a partisan response to a partisan speech.
“I think that the governor’s deflection of all these issues onto an administration that has barely been in office at the federal level is a strategy that’s not going to work, and I think that is why, certainly, our caucus was not going to applaud that kind of behavior,” Candelora said.
“Everything seemed to be targeted towards Republicans or towards what’s going on in Washington, D.C. And I think that was because of, there was the lack of specifics in the budget towards actually helping people in the state,” Harding said.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Lamont had little choice but to address Trump’s extraordinary first weeks in office.
“Sometimes extreme behavior requires different reactions. And I thought he did it as politely as he could,” Ritter said.
The Republican leaders said they heard nothing in Lamont’s speech that hinted he was thinking about a third term. Democrats, some tired of the Capitol game of guessing which way Lamont is leaning, said it was a speech he would give regardless of his latest thinking about 2026.
Danbury Mayor Roberto Alves, who was the governor’s choice to recently take over the state Democratic Party as its chair, declined to cast the speech in a broader political context than passing a budget.
“It sounded like a budget address,” Alves said, smiling. “A really good budget address.”