If it were possible for Governor Dannel Malloy to transfer
Connecticut’s debt backward to previous administrations, he would do so a New
York minute. This being impossible, he has shifted blame for the state’s
current indebtedness to preceding governors, absolving from adverse criticism,
for some odd reason, former Governor Lowell Weicker, whom he rarely mentions as
being a governor who had run up future debt by increasing taxes and spending.
Perhaps that is because Malloy himself has adopted Weicker’s
strategy in attacking debt – raise taxes. Twice since he had been elected the
first Democratic governor in twenty six years, Malloy has raised taxes,
imposing on the state both the largest and the second largest tax increases in
state history. The last Connecticut pre-income tax budget was about $7.5
billion; the current Malloy budget is nearly three times as large, every single
penny of it having been appropriate from Connecticut’s real working party,
middle class people mostly who uncomplainingly go off to work in in the
morning, kiss their children good night in the evening, go off to working in
the morning and pay their increasingly burdensome taxes.
The truth is that the General Assembly is responsible for
getting and spending in the state. Inconveniently, both houses of the General Assembly
have been dominated by Democrats for at least twenty years, and the body is, to
put it simply a coward. It has adamantly refused to address the problem of
spending. If spending is indeed the problem, the solution to the problem must
involve PERMANENT cuts in spending, and such cuts can only be accomplished
through basic long-term reforms such as:
1) Reduce business taxes and regulations, thus spurring job
growth; 2) currently, union-state negotiations in Connecticut are governed by
contract. In neighboring Rhode Island, statute governs negotiations, an arrangement
that makes legislators rather than courts the true arbiters of labor disputes.
A like change in Connecticut would return budget responsibility to elected
representatives rather than to judicial decision makers; 3) Reduce benefits and
salaries for new hires; 4) reform employee health care plans. Several towns in
Connecticut already have realized savings by switching “their new hires into a
high deductible health savings accounts and eliminated pension plans for
non-union employees,” according to the Yankee Institute;
5) end binding arbitration, which in Connecticut has served as a union salary
and benefit escalator; 6) allow leaders in the General Assembly to be active
participants in any and all union negotiation and, most importantly, 7) cut
spending.
Governor Dannell Malloy is a lawyer. Adjectives are
important to lawyers. In a post budget presentation story, CTMirror notes, “The Democratic governor announced
earlier this winter that he would not propose any major (emphasis mine) tax increases, but said last week
that smaller (emphasis mine) increases
could not be removed from consideration.” Following imposition of the two
largest tax increases in Connecticut history, Malloy several times indicated
that he would seek to balance future chronically out-of-balance budget by means
other than tax increases. These clockwork representations were made prior to
state elections.
CTMirror’s Keith
Phaneuf has no difficulty is tagging the elimination of tax credits as tax
increases: “The biggest tax increase in the new budget involves canceling the
property tax credit.”
Non-lawyers would
agree that cancelling the property tax credit is, for all practical purposes, a
tax increase – and a big one at that. When a tax credit is removed, the
put-upon taxpayer is forced to surrender to the state more tax money. And money
traveling from her budget (studies
show that more women than men handle house budgets; so much for silly notions
that men rather than women are more math proficient) to a state budget represents
a “tax increase, and a big one at that. Towns thrown on their own resources either
will have to cut spending or raise property taxes to back-fill their budget
hole.
How burdensome is
the average Connecticut taxpayer’s burden? A 2015 Truth in Accounting comparative study pulls no punches: “Connecticut owes more than it owns. At
-$49,000, Connecticut's “Taxpayer's Burden” [per capita] ranks 49th out of the
50 states. Connecticut is among 40 “Sinkhole States” without enough assets to
cover its debt.”
Now, here is the odd
thing. After two major tax increases why would Malloy and other progressives in
the General Assembly need yet another major tax increase? And why are state
legislators, who cannot balance a budget, reaching into balanced municipal
budgets to finance their own deficits. Indeed, after three massive infusions of
taxes, including Lowell Weicker’s 1991 income tax, why does state government,
need more tax increases? Connecticut’s last non-income tax budget was 7.5
billion. The two year budget presented by Malloy on February 8th is $40.6 billion.
Here is the answer
to the question. Warning: it may not pass legal muster. Getting and spending
and are not two sides of the same coin; they are the same side of the same coin,
in this sense: whatever you get, you spend. If you are a budget minded female
householder who balances the family’s budget, you might possibly be able to
sock away some savings for future expenditures after you have paid your bills.
This is something that Democratic guys (mostly) in the General Assembly are
loathed to do – which is why bills remain unpaid. The more Connecticut taxes,
the more it spends. Connecticut’s expenditures continues at their historic
pace, outstripping revenues and creating future debt that may, if you are a
crafty Democratic governor-lawyer, be passed on to future generations or be
back-filled by conducting a raid on responsible towns that actually balance
budgets.
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