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Day Thwacks Williams, Donovan

In a bone crunching editorial in The Day of New London on Sunday, President Pro Tem of the Senate Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan are sent to the infirmary:

“No one in the Democratic leadership, it appears, wants to face the reality of a dramatic decrease in tax revenues tied to a prolonged recession. By all reports, the Democratic caucus cannot agree how to proceed, likely leading to inaction on Tuesday. Support and faith in Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, has severely eroded. House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, may have a stellar liberal record of supporting health care for the poor, children's programs and organized labor, but he seems ill-suited for a time that requires tough decisions that will harm some of those very constituencies.”
The Democratic controlled legislature is, The Day asserts “Frozen with fear when confronting a monster largely of its own making, the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly is readying to "gavel in and gavel out" when legislators return Tuesday for a special session, ordered by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell to deal with a budget deficit approaching $500 million.

“In other words, the Democrats in control of the legislature may once again ignore the fiscal crisis that confronts the state and instead head home for the holidays.”

The New Haven Register patiently explains to Donovan and Williams what a spending cut really is:

"Democrats, who control the General Assembly, have been loathe to make real cuts in state spending, preferring to prop up a governmental structure that its revenues cannot support. The boiler plate claims in their constituent letters of millions in spending cuts actually refer to cuts in spending increases. Under the budget that was adopted without the governor’s signature, state spending increases this year and next."

And even the usually eupeptic, spend-it-while-you-got-it Hartford Courant points to a bleak future:

"And this squabble over cutting a couple hundred million dollars foreshadows what lies ahead in the next biennium: the far more difficult job of balancing budgets that could be several billion dollars in deficit."

Chris Powell, the Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer, knows what has to be done, but it is doubtful his message will reach the ears of Williams and Donovan. Where there is no will to ameliorate an increasingly desperate state of affairs, there can be no way out of the getting and spending box, Connecticut's "little ease," a contrivance fashioned by the French to sweat prisoners in which luckless prisoners found themselves in a cramped space where they could neither lie down or stand up.

In the "little ease" contrived by the legislature, there will be much to think about come the next election.

Merry Christmas.

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