Connecticut’s new earned income tax credit will provide needed financial help to as many as 190,000 low-income workers, supporters say. Critics dismiss it as welfare, The Associated Press reports.
The tax credit, part of the $40 billion, two-year budget signed Wednesday by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, is a major victory for the Democratic governor and Democrats who run the Legislature after being blocked for years by then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell, Malloy’s Republican predecessor.
Sen. Martin Looney, the Democrats’ leader in the state Senate, called it an economic stimulus for low-income workers.
“It recognizes that low-income workers have expenses tied to work that are more burdensome than for high-income workers,” he said, citing transportation and other necessities.
Malloy pushed for the tax credit in his budget address to the Legislature in February.
