A newspaper reports
that Republican leaders John McKinney and Larry Cafero, both of whom have
professed interest in running for governor, are once again being shut out of budget
negotiations by Governor Dannel Malloy.
This is getting to be a habit.
During Mr. Malloy’s first budget -- By the way, has Mr.
Malloy’s budget EVER been in balance? – the governor unceremoniously showed the
door to Republicans.
Mr. Malloy brought Republicans back to the table on two
occasions: during a special session, when Mr. Malloy needed some help balancing
his chronically out of balance budget, and during negotiations on a gun
restriction bill following the mass murders in Sandy Hook.
On both occasions, Mr. Malloy and accommodating Republicans
were praised by left of center commentators in the media for their show of
bipartisanship. Here in Connecticut, it was said, bipartisanship was much in
the air, and it was hinted that the U.S. Congress, deep in the mire of partisan
deadlock, certainly could take a lesson from a state in which both parties came
together to settle a budget deficit and pass the most restrictive gun
regulations in the nation.
Republican players both times were happy to play. Now, as the
General Assembly begins to tinker with Mr. Malloy’s second budget, Republicans once
again find themselves sent to Coventry.
The exile of Republicans to Coventry, where they will be
expected to bide their time in prayer and holy silence, does not bode well for
the state. It means that Mr. Malloy and his confederates – most importantly
state unions, who made out like proverbial bandits the last time Republicans
were frozen out of budget negotiations – will be unobstructed in shaping their
second biennial budget.
The shape of Mr. Malloy’s second budget may be deduced from
his first. On that occasion, it should be recalled, Democratic leaders in the
General Assembly pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s budget prior to his negotiations
with SEBAC, an organization of unions authorized to negotiate contracts with
the state. One commentator wrote that leaders in the Democratic dominated
General Assembly conferred upon the governor plenipotentiary powers to
negotiate contracts that would impact the budget nine years out.
The negotiations were messy but profitable in the end for
unions. The “savings” in Mr. Malloy’s first budget were amorphous, the tax
increases painful. Progressive Democrats were tolerably satisfied with Mr.
Malloy’s first budget. The tax increases, job investment money removed from the
private sector and delivered to government coffers, gave crony capitalist
progressives enough funds to “invest” in enterprises that in the future would
pay out dividends, in the form of votes and political contributions, to
Democrats. Frozen out of the process,
Republicans were free to assail a budget that had no Republican fingerprints on
it.
A fairly comprehensive review of Mr. Malloy’s second budget by
CTMirror is riven with doubts and fears. One always snaps to when one happens
upon a budget review entitled “Promises, Gimmicks and a Historic Shortfall.”
After imposing on the state the largest tax increase in its history, Mr.
Malloy made a firm vow to forego further tax increases.
“With a gap
of $1.2 billion projected for the fiscal year that starts in July,”
CTMirror advises, “Malloy not only is seeking more sacrifices, but he's also
turning to taxes and some of the gimmicks he swore off of two years ago.”
The gimmicks
include an extension of expiring
tax increases on businesses and power plants, a reduction of tax credits for
working poor families, funding cuts to colleges and universities at a time when
higher education continues to increase tuition and fees, deep cuts both to
hospitals and health coverage for thousands of low-income adults, a raid on the
transportation fund and, that old standby, borrowing hundreds of millions of
dollars to pay ongoing bills -- all this
from an administration that boosted taxes considerably while it publically
scorned prior administrations for resorting to discreditable methods in balancing
budgets.
It does not help at all that the national economy continues to founder
under the ministrations of Barack Obama, the most progressive president in
modern history. Had Mr. Obama concentrated during his first term in office on rebuilding
the shattered mortgage market, the American economy would have surged forward.
But instead, Mr. Obama grasped for a national health care brass ring first
proposed in the 1912 national election by the father of the modern progressive
movement, Teddy Roosevelt. Obamacare,
payment for which has now come due, is but a baby step on the road to
nationalized health care. Should anyone care to preview the final product, a
Veteran Administration hospital is on view in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.
In a high tax, over regulated, foundering economy, tax receipts simply
dry up. Investments in the private economy also dry up as investors, hampered
by excessive regulation and punishing taxes, hoard their dollars waiting for
relief from a redistributionist minded government.
The late Maggie Thatcher, Prime Minister of Britain, use to say that “the
problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s
money.” The government of Connecticut – yet a far cry from the socialist utopia
envisioned by Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate for president in 1912– is
running out of the money its governor hopes to be able to “invest” in crony
capitalist enterprises that mollify the state’s clamorous left of center
interests.
It’s a problem.
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