Connecticut needs a mini-revolution.
A state budget, like a federal budget, is the single most
important piece of legislation produced in any fiscal year. The
reason for this is obvious: A budget is an appropriation and expenditure engine
for a getting and spending vehicle that drives us into the future. It also is a
destiny map. Without the engine, the car does not move. Precisely
because a budget is central to the welfare of the state, all the representative
organs of the state should participate in its formation.
Ever since Democrats seized control of the governor’s office
in 2011 with the election of Governor Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic
governor since the William O’Neill administration expired in
1991, representative government – particularly in connection with
the budget – has been shelved by state progressives who are determined to use
their levers of power to do two things: 1) to establish a permanent,
unchangeable, progressive political order in the state, and 2) to effectively
dismantle all opposition which, of course, would include both the opposition of
a rival political party and public opposition in any form. This ambition
is secured through a process of exclusion. Political appendages – i.e. state
parties – atrophy when not in use, and so a denial of political participation,
as any authoritarian tyrant well knows, is tantamount to a death sentence. The
unitary party state ALWAYS results in the death of democracy, which can only
express itself effectively through a political medium such as a political
party.
One has only to look to Connecticut cities for examples of
atrophied political opposition, one party rule and the demise of democracy at
the hands of a permanent political class. Pastor Corey Brooks from one of the roughest sections of Chicago spoke for many when he said, “We have a large, disproportionate number of
people who are impoverished. We have a disproportionate number of people who
are incarcerated, we have a disproportionate number of people who are
unemployed, the educational system has totally failed, and all of this
primarily has been under Democratic regimes in our neighborhoods. So, the question for me becomes, how can our
neighborhoods be doing so awful and so bad when we’re so loyal to this party
who is in power? It’s a matter of them taking complete advantage of our vote.”
Twice during the administration of Mr. Malloy, Republican
representatives in the General Assembly have been denied admittance to the
Democratic Party private back room where Mr. Malloy has hammered out budgets
with Connecticut’s REAL legislative organs – Democratic leaders in the House
and Senate and SEBAC, the union conglomerate authorized to speak for state
employees in contract negotiations. The new progressive order in Connecticut
also has a reliable ally in a weak-tea media. This writer has
referred to SEBAC in past columns as Connecticut’s fourth branch of government,
and it would not be too much of a stretch to qualify Mr. Malloy and his back
room bargaining associates – Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey and President
Pro Tem of the Senate Martin Looney as union patsies. The people of Connecticut
do not need a Governor SEBAC, and it is gut-wrenchingly humiliating to watch
these three guardians of democracy bowing and scraping at the feet of union
leaders, while the state they are supposed to represent tumbles off a cliff of
their own making into a sea of red ink.
Mr. Malloy knows in his bones – deep in the marrow of his
bones where the clamorous voices of special interests are muted – that state
unions must be brought to heel. Connecticut must wring at least $2 billion from
its suffocating, regulation-ridden budget. The easiest, least painful way of
snatching dollars from the iron jaws of SEBAC is to raise by two years the
retirement age for future state workers at all employee platform levels. And
ending one of the retirement platforms most often used by politicians who want
to pad their pensions – the vested
right of retirement after ten years of service -- would
wondrously improve the disapprobation of the general public towards grasping,
selfish members of Connecticut’s permanent political class. That would put
a permanent dent in the state’s unsupportable pension system; it would be a
permanent, long term fix. Other Connecticut governors roundly criticized by Mr.
Malloy have done just the opposite. Faced with budget red ink, they have
provided early retirement for state workers in return for temporary budget
adjustments, thus passing along Connecticut’s unsupportable pension bill to the children, grandchildren
and great grandchildren of the state, deepening the state’s $76.8 billion pension liability.
Republicans should support such measures – and campaign on
them, using in their campaigns the same populist rhetoric deployed by
progressives. We all know that the “war against women,” a politically pious
piece of nonsense invented by Democrats who hope to corral women’s votes in
state and national elections, is a fraud. It’s worse than a lie; it’s a silly,
easily exploded political bumper sticker. But the war of some – in Connecticut
and elsewhere, special interests that support progressive policies – against
all is not a lie. It is a garrote around the throat of democracy itself.
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