#

When New Hampshire voted on Chris Sununu, they had thoughts of the success and prosperity seen under his father, John Sununu, who served three consecutive terms from 1996 to 2002 before moving into the U.S. Senate. New Hampshire was hoping to get back to fiscal conservatism after seeing the budget increase under Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. To support him, New Hampshire voted him a majority of Republicans to pave his way. We can’t recall the last time the House has not passed the governor’s budget.  Until now.

New Hampshire voted for someone they thought would stand up for the New Hampshire family’s wallets, not try to drain the spare change from their children’s piggy banks. This is not the fiscal conservative that people looked for in a Republican. But then again this is the same man who declared his full-hearted support for Planned Parenthood and all it stood for in a live-streamed voting session of the Executive Council. Then the next day, declared that Planned Parenthood had “tricked him” into that vote. So either he doesn’t read the bills put before him or he just simply doesn’t understand them. Since he had voted against the bill only a year before, it seems more likely that someone read a poll to him and said in this way he could win votes from both sides of the table. Winning the election was all he cared about, so he could jump to a U.S. Senate seat in 2020.

It seems that a higher salary is all he is aiming at. This is evidenced by the fact that he took the highest possible gubernatorial salary he could since before Craig Benson was in office, and then the first thing he did in office was give himself a 2 percent raise.

I encourage the Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate to think about the New Hampshire people when amending and voting on the budget. To think about the fact that we’ve done all we can to support our communities. To remember that many communities have voted down increasing taxes for full-day kindergarten because we simply can’t afford it and let the individual communities make that decision based on what they can and cannot do. It’s not that we don’t want to support our children. I have a child in public elementary school and had two children already graduate from public school, so I understand and value the education they get because I want them to have the best possible future. One of those children wants to be a teacher herself.

I urge our legislature to remember that our small businesses cannot afford to increase their tax burdens and that any increase to them will force them to let go of more employees (those that still have employees). To remember that more than one large businesses are leaving the state due to the cost of doing business here already and when they leave, they take much needed jobs with them.

It is important that we remember the people who pay the taxes in the state when voting on a budget and why they voted for you in the first place. The current governor may not remember them, but I have faith that our elected legislature will.