Q: President Pro Tem of the State House of Representatives
Martin Looney appeared recently on “Face the State” with Dennis House and seemed
– though in politics, appearances may be deceiving – to have repudiated
progressivism…
A: I don’t think he’s ready to give up on progressivism just
yet. You cannot have strongman government without progressivism. He did point
out a major, perhaps fatal, failing.
Q: You quoted what he said in one of your columns.
A: Yes, Mr. House
noted that Ben Barnes, the head of Governor Dannel Malloy’s Office of Policy
Management, had said that the state “might be seeing deficits for some time.”
Deficits were “the new normal. Do you agree with that?” he
asked Mr. Looney. Mr. Looney answered:
“It’s hard to predict what the
performance of the economy will be too far in advance, which is why we always
wind up in fact adjusting the second year of the biennial budget. We passed a two
year budget in the session’s odd years, and we wind up adjusting that second
year budget. So, the situation is volatile, but one other trend that we do have
to recognize is that, while unemployment in our state is down and actual
employment is up, we are to some extent victimized by the progressivity of our
own tax structure. Because of an array of credits and deductions that we
have, most people earning under $40,000 a year or so wind up not having income
tax liability. A lot of the jobs that have been created are in the service
economy. So, while we are seeing an increase in employment, we are not seeing
an increase in tax revenues. But I think that’s why both the Governor and the
General Assembly are committed to advance the interest of high tech businesses
and others that will, in fact, pay high wages, so that people will then be able
to support the state.”
It was a refreshingly honest mouthful. I should point out
that Mr. Barnes was being equally honest when he acknowledged that Connecticut
would be facing deficits for some time to come.
Q: Why?
A: For multiple reasons. In no order of importance: The
price of gas is down, and with it tax revenues. Connecticut is reliant on an
expanding financial sector, which has performed poorly in the Obama recession. Some
businesses have fled the state; others, General Electric for instance, are
contemplating an exit. After massive tax increases, the price of doing business
in Connecticut has become prohibitive. The regulatory apparat is discouraging.
And Connecticut’s progressive tax structure, as Mr. Looney pointed out,
contains the seeds of its own destruction. If you eliminate taxes for both the
rich and the lower middle class, you have emptied the well; the bulk of the tax
burden then will fall on Connecticut vanishing middle class. Taken together,
Mr. Looney statement and Mr. Barnes’ statement represent a sort of “writing on
the wall” that would be dangerous to dismiss out of hand.
Q: Will it be dismissed?
A: Of course.
Q: Why?
A: From cowardice and political hubris. Why did Belshazzar’s
father dismiss the many warnings he had been given? We are told “He was driven
away from people and given the mind of an animal; he lived with the wild
donkeys and ate grass like the ox; and his body was drenched with the dew of
heaven, until he acknowledged that the Most High God is sovereign over all
kingdoms on earth and sets over them anyone he wishes.” Apparently, these condign
punishments were curative; not so for Belshazzar. Through arrogance and a lack of humility, he slept
soundly, we must suppose, after Daniel had interpreted the mysterious writing
on the wall:
“God has numbered the days of
your reign and brought it to an end.
“You have been weighed on the scales and
found wanting.
“Your kingdom is divided and given
to the Medes and Persians.”
Leaving God out of it – as most legislators and governors
are disposed to do -- our present ministers of the public good seem incapable
of reading properly the signs of the times, which in Connecticut all point
downwards.
Q: What did Mr. Looney mean when he said “the situation is
volatile?”
A: He was speaking of past budgets. “Volatile” is perhaps too
kind a word. The volatility began, perversely enough, with Lowell Weicker’s
income tax. I say “perversely” because the tax was supposed to stabilize
Connecticut’s future budgets. It did no such thing – just the opposite. It was
a permission to other legislators, most of them incipient progressives, to
spend wildly, and they did not disappoint. Within the space of three governors,
two of them Republicans, Connecticut’s budget tripled – which meant spending
had tripled. The spending multiplier at first created surpluses, which were
plowed under, and then deficits. In the meantime, revenue resources were
diminishing. At the time Mr. Weicker instituted the income tax, the state deficit
was about $1.5 billion. During his first term in office, Mr. Malloy discharged
a deficit of $2.5 billion by raising taxes, the largest tax increase in state
history. Deficits continued because the General Assembly had not attacked
spending. The governor’s second term budget was the second largest tax increase
in state history. And so, here we are – at the center of a volatile spending
tornado. One would suppose a reasonable governor would have deciphered the
writing on the wall – cut spending. But no, in his second term as governor, Mr.
Malloy proposed a 30 year $100 billion infrastructure repair program.
Transportation problems, Mr. Malloy says, are driving business out of state.
Actually, it is Mr. Malloy and progressives like him in the General Assembly who
for many years have been driving businesses out of state.
Q: What will it take to make them, as you say, see the
writing on the wall?
A: A total collapse of the state, and with it their fanciful
and impossibly distended political pretentions. Short of that, a wide-awake
media might be helpful.
Q: The media in Connecticut is asleep?
A: Well, what are we to think? It used to be the business of
the media to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I can’t think
of any politician in Connecticut more comfortable than U.S. Senator Dick
Blumenthal, unless it is Governor Malloy. Connecticut’s General Assembly has been
a Democratic preserve for decades unruffled by serious media criticism.
Q: But we’ve had two Republican Governors, John Rowland and
Jodi Rell.
A: Both of whom have offered little resistance to the party
in power.
Q: They claimed to be fiscal conservatives – social liberals
to be sure, but fiscal conservatives.
A: And firewalls. They were to be a break on spending and
tax increases. We’ve seen how that worked out: Spending has increased threefold
since the last pre-income tax budget. I reject the distinction between fiscal
and social conservatives: Every political issue, including economic ones, is a social issue. That distinction should be replaced by a more lucid
one: There are courageous conservatives -- among whom should be numbered
conservatives who object to late term abortion, once described by Daniel
Patrick Moynihan as too close to infanticide to be tolerated in a merciful
society – and cowardly conservatives. The Democrats are winning on social issues.
They’ve lost the fiscal argument, which is why Connecticut is in economic
turmoil. Events already have spoken loudly here. They are winning votes on
social questions, largely because the Republican Party in Connecticut has fled
the social conservative battle ground without so much as having fired a shot.
Perhaps I should mention that all the Republican “fiscal conservatives” in the
state’s U.S. Congressional Delegation -- U.S. Representatives Nancy Johnson,
Rob Simmons and Chris Shays – have been replaced by progressive Democrats. Their
cowardly silence of social issues cost them their seats in Congress. Here is a syllogism
Republicans should seriously consider: 1) One may enact programs only if one is
elected to office; 2) Democrats, both in Connecticut and nationally, win office
on social rather than economic issues; 3) therefore, if Republicans wish to see
their economic programs enacted, they must fasten their courage to the hitching
post and speak out on social issues.
Q: So, the New Year is upon us; what do you see.
A: More spending, higher taxes, more business flight, more
strongman politics, the further abandonment among Democrats of legislative prerogatives
in the General Assembly, a greater indifference to real problems among
Connecticut’s media, more of the same old, same old.
Q: Doesn’t sound good.
A: Happy New Year.
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