State Senate Democrats blamed “reckless Republican spending” for New Hampshire’s projected state budget shortfalls at a Wednesday morning press conference as they laid out their ‘Getting Back to What Matters’ agenda for the new biennium.
“Thanks to years of reckless Republican spending, we’re facing a looming budget deficit,” said Deputy Senate Minority Leader Cindy Rosenwald (D-Nashua). “Republicans have continued to cut state revenues while spending money like drunken sailors, leaving property taxpayers stuck paying the bill.”
“Make no mistake why we are in this fight in the first place,” Rosenwald added.
Republicans welcomed Rosenwald’s condemnation of excessive spending, which affirms the GOP’s argument that the state’s budget crunch is a spending problem, not a revenue one.
However, several Republicans told NHJournal that given the Democrats’ past efforts to increase, rather than limit, spending, it was hard to take the “drunken sailor” slam seriously.
“Cindy Rosenwald complaining about spending is like Patrick Mahomes complaining about the refs,” quipped one State House insider.
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Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka (D-Portsmouth) hosts a press conference with her fellow Senate Democrats on January 29, 2025.
After losing two seats in November, Democrats are down to eight members in the Senate, while the GOP enjoys a 16-seat supermajority. Led by Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Perkins-Kwoka (D-Portsmouth), all eight members of the caucus participated in the press event, each taking a different area of focus.
“Amidst all the noise and divisiveness that can distract from our day-to-day concerns, we’re focused on getting back to what matters,” Perkins Kwoka said. “That means providing affordable housing, lowering your cost of living, maintaining healthy and safe communities, securing our freedoms, supporting hardworking Granite Staters in all phases of life, and ensuring we have a strong education system.”
On housing, Tara Reardon (D- Concord) offered two key programs Democrats backed to increase housing production. “First, state-issued bonds to back housing development and subsequently increase our affordable housing stock; and second, C-PACER — an innovative financing tool that spurs development while also highlighting of energy efficiency in towns, all without any cost to those cities and towns.”
C-PACER stands for “Commercial Property Assessed Clean and Resiliency.” A C-PACER bill has been co-sponsored by Readon and Republican Sen. Dan Innis (R-Bradford).
Seacoast progressive Sen. Debra Altschiller made the caucus’ case on social issues like abortion rights, opposition to immigration enforcement, and support for unrestricted vote by mail.
“It’s time to let go of Republicans’ performative patriotism that has them wrapping themselves in the flag, while simultaneously making it harder for Granite Staters to vote. Enough already!”
Assistant Senate Minority Leader Sue Prentiss (D-West Lebanon) took point on public safety.
“Having safer, secure communities means investments in fire, police, and EMS, and we know that we have vacancies in State Police that are honestly staggering,” Prentiss said. One idea to address those vacancies is free community college tuition for first responders. “This has covered fire, police, and EMS, and now will build out to include our public safety dispatchers,” Prentiss said.
Asked about the public safety aspect of the sanctuary city ban supported unanimously by Democrats on the House Criminal Justice Committee, Prentiss said, “I will not be supporting it.”
“I think we’re conflating civil and criminal. The city of Lebanon has long had — as has the town of Hanover — a ‘welcoming’ ordinance. We’ve welcomed all members of the community. And if you (an illegal alien) are arrested and you have a criminal offense, that’s one thing. But if you are in our community, working on becoming of citizen, we are not going to target you and do the job of ICE.”
Other Democrat initiatives touted at the press conference included:
- Gun violence prevention without infringing on the rights of law-abiding Granite Staters;
- Raising the minimum wage, in partnership with businesses in a planned and stable way;
- Funding schools fairly and equitably, and ending the diversion of public dollars into the Republican irresponsible voucher spending.
But it was the condemnation of “reckless spending” that got the most pushback.
“I don’t recall Sen. Rosenwald complaining about spending increase when the budget came to the Senate floor,” said Greg Moore with Americans for Prosperity. “Instead, I recall her extolling the virtues of what the budget did fund.”