President Pro Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney, one of
the top Democratic leaders in the Democrat dominated General Assembly, has
accused loyal opposition Republicans of campaigning. Mr. Looney wrote in a Harford Courant op-ed,
“It's one thing to mount a campaign; it's another thing to govern. The
Democratic majority in the General Assembly is committed to the hard
work of governing.”
Republican leaders in the General Assembly – excluded during
Governor Dannel Malloy’s entire term in office, with one notable exception;
they were admitted to vote for a hastily written gun control bill – would, and
have, heartily agreed with one of the principal gate keepers in the law-making
body: Bi-partisanship, flouted by Mr.
Looney and Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey for five years, is necessary
for good governance. Excluded by
Democrats from budget making, Republicans have wandered in the dessert for five
years, but now the door has been thrown open to them, according to Mr. Looney.
And what do they do? They launch a campaign against a failed
Democratic polity that bears no Republican fingerprints. How naughty of them.
The nominal leader of the Democratic Party in Connecticut,
Governor Dannel Malloy, has had a “Damascus Road” conversion. In his recent budget
address, in the course of which he has by implication repented for having
pursued a failed progressive polity, Mr. Malloy opened his ears, and perhaps
his heart, to what can only be called some of the ideas peddled by opposition
Republicans. If Republicans are permitted to leave their mark on the current
failed budget, it would be reasonable to conclude that the upcoming mid-year
budget negotiations had been “bi-partisan,” a term that, for the past four years,
has not flown effortlessly from Mr. Looney lips. However, largely because of
past treatment by leading Democrats who appear to be stuck in a permanent
campaign mode, Republicans are, understandably cautious.
For as many years as both have served in the General
Assembly, Democratic leaders Looney and Sharkey have spent money wildly without
regard to the economic reality begging at their knees. Along the way, they have
made themselves insensible to various business associations, prudent economists
and pragmatic politicians. But now, following Mr. Malloy's Damascus Road
experience -- occasioned by his throw from a progressive high-horse by bolts of
lightning shot from the mouth of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and others –
Mr. Looney has called upon what he regards as the Republican Party cavalry to
persuade opposition Republicans from launching what promises to be a successful
campaign against Mr. Looney’s progressive lunacy.
Why this Looney bi-partisan cooing now? Well, there is an
election looming in Mr. Looney’s future, and he does not wish Republicans to
revert to a campaign mode during current budget deliberations. So then, here is
Mr. Looney’s cri de coeur: “The
Connecticut Business and Industry Association, the MetroHartford Alliance, our
chambers of commerce, largest employers and leading corporate CEOs must demand
that Republicans remain at the bipartisan bargaining table rather than walk
away, as they did in December at a time when bipartisan compromise was possible
had they stayed.”
Mr. Looney, a big city progressive in thrall to
Connecticut’s powerful union lobby, has yet to suggest that Republican leaders
should be chained to their desks and thumb-screwed until they submit to his own
demands for fewer budget cuts and more revenue enhancements – i.e. more spending
and higher taxes.
Two days after Mr. Malloy appeared in a Stamford “Town Hall Meeting” to sell his new “no-tax-increase”
budget to a dubious audience, he quietly approved three percent raises for
non-union state employees in December, the increases to take effect on March 4,
according to a Yankee Institute media release.
Republicans have suggested that all union contract negotiations should be
monitored by a bi-partisan group of legislators because the General Assembly is
ultimately responsible for allocating diminishing tax resources. That
suggestion was given a thumbs down by Democratic leaders in the General
Assembly. During his first budget, Mr. Malloy signed a revised spending plan
submitted to him by the General Assembly, then negotiated contracts with union
representatives that increased a budget bottom line he already had approved.
The revised budget was never resubmitted to the General Assembly, which had
given Mr. Malloy plenipotentiary powers to accept a re-altered budget without
formal legislative authorization. Mr. Malloy said at the time that he would be
quite willing to accept the pre-election heat that would arise because of
increased spending.
The unorthodox arrangement saved progressives like Mr. Looney
the trouble of explaining to their constituents why Democrats -- who have owned
the General Assembly and the Governor’s office for the last six years -- were unwilling to put their fingerprints on a
pro-tax and spend budget so close to elections. This time around, Mr. Looney is
hoping to blame the Democrat regime’s embarrassing budget pratfalls on Republicans
whom he and others had pointedly excluded from past budget negotiations, which
is on a par with an arsonist blaming firemen for conflagrations that have
destroyed houses he has torched.
Good luck with that.
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