Speaker of the state
House Chris Donovan and President Pro Tem of the state Senate Don Williams have
been closeted together discussing two bills: a jobs bill pushed by Governor
Dannel Malloy that appears to have bipartisan support in the General Assembly and
Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill.
Mr. Donovan, running
for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District, dearly wants to
push his bill raising the minimum wage 50 cents over two years through the General
Assembly, and to this end he announced last week that he intended to attach his
bill to a budget implementer.
After meeting with
Mr. Williams for a little more than an hour, Mr. Donovan appeared to be
uncertain which donkey’s rear he would attach his tail to, according to a story
in CTNewsJunkie.
Mr. Williams, who
can count up to 36 without stumbling, is convinced he lacks the votes in the
Senate to pass Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage hike, a point he pressed upon Mr.
Donovan sometime before the soon to be retired Speaker conditioned passage of
the jobs bill in the House upon the passage in the Senate of his signature
legislation. Mr. Donovan declined to
present Mr. William’s bill in the House, and both bills expired in the last
session.
Mr. Malloy – unlike former Republican governor Jodi Rell, a
vigorous political campaigner –could easily throw his support to former state
Representative Elizabeth Esty, the wife of Daniel Esty, the governor’s
Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental
Protection (DEEP).
At the Democratic
nominating convention, Mr. Donovan rolled over Mrs. Esty, winning the 5th
District nomination by 64 percent of the vote, marshaling 216 votes to Mrs.
Esty’s 66. Both Mrs. Esty and Dan Roberti, who garnered 54 votes, qualified to
campaign against Mr. Donovan in a primary. The delegate count likely encouraged
Mr. Donovan to continue his efforts in persuading Mr. Williams to bring up the
minimum wage bill in the Senate.
The introduction
into the Senate of Mr. Donovan’s bill, assuming the numbers argue against it,
is a politically charged affair. There are compelling reasons to vote against
the bill: Minimum wage hikes artificially increase the price of labor, and the
price of labor figures in the calculations of small businesses that tend to
hire minimum wage workers. Beyond a certain point, businesses operating on a
slender profit margin and forced to pay what may be for them an insupportable wage
will accommodate the state ordered hike in wages by cutting back on hiring
those affected, mostly young people entering the job market for the first time.
Businesses that cannot make the cost saving accommodations will go out of
business. In the long run, these compelled choices will not invigorate business
activity and job production. Should Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage bill pass,
Connecticut’s minimum wage will be the highest in the nation. In the long run,
Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill sends to businesses considering
moving into the state and instate businesses considering expanding a message
that frustrates current efforts to prime the job pump.
In the short run,
minimum wage hikes are campaign boosters, a staple political product of the
fevered progressive on the make. In the long run, we are all dead. The long run
is for chumps; it’s the short run that gets you elected and re-elected,
particularly in a one party state in which left of center Democrats depend upon
unions to prime the voting pump. Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard
place, Democrats in the General Assembly would rather not commit themselves
publically to a vote on the minimum wage bill.
At the moment, Mr.
Donovan is focused on attaching his bill to some viable legislative vehicle.
Using a budget implementer to ferry his minimum wage hike through the General
Assembly, some Democratic legislators think, might jeopardize the more
politically attractive bi-partisan jobs
bill. Asked by the reporter for CTNewsJunkie whether he thought such a prospect
was likely, Mr. Donovan replied, “We’re hoping to make everybody happy. That’s
what we’re trying to do.”
Mr. Donovan has
already loosed his moorings to the tattered remains of what some benighted
traditionalists still insist on calling the Democratic Party’s moderate “vital
center.” There is no center, merely epicenters colliding with each other. Mr. Donovan purports to represent the future
of state Democratic Party politics, solidly union connected, firmly centered in
the state’s cities, unapologetically progressive and rather impatient with the stuffy
old guard of the Democratic Party.
The new dawning day needs
a new vanguard. Mr. Donovan is prepared to lead. Followers will find the
welcome mat put out before the door to utopia.
Comments