AARP Eye Center
AARP Connecticut State Director Nora Duncan provided an additional comment in regards to Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal:
While Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal has pros and cons, AARP Connecticut is concerned about the negative effect of the accumulated cuts and taxes to lower and middle-income retirees who already struggle because of our high cost of living or who might choose to leave Connecticut for the same reason. 
The call for repeal of a bipartisan income tax relief promise for social security recipients, and those with pensions and annuity income, has a real impact on the nearly 600,000 AARP members in Connecticut. They look to AARP and legislators, many of whom promoted their affirmative vote on this issue in their 2018 re-election campaigns, to stop this repeal. When we combine this with his proposals for cuts to the Medicare Savings Program and a sales tax on over-the-counter drugs, it seems a disproportionate burden on Connecticut’s retirees.
In his budget, the Governor raises concerns about net outmigration and Connecticut's Gross State Product hovering at 10.4 percent below the pre-recession peak, while acknowledging Connecticut’s large population of age 45-54 year-olds. Retirees and those who are close to retirement, the age 50+ residents that are thinking about where to live and where to retire, make up 37 percent of the state’s population. Yet their total economic contribution to the Gross State Product is 47 percent and they support 49 percent of state and local taxes. Policies and programs needs to work for, not against, those whose contributions to our state outsize their share of the population.
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