The Great Compromise will compromise everyone but
Connecticut’s lame-duck Governor and an insensate Democrat dominated General
Assembly.
A front page, top of the fold headline in a Hartford paper blares,
“Time For Compromise,” and a sub-heading trumpets, “Malloy Offers Plan With New Tax Hikes, Republicans
Scoff.”
Unsurprisingly – because Democrats are up to their old hat
tricks – the Malloy plan includes onerous tax increases, the sort of whips and
scorns that have made of Connecticut a no-man’s-land for companies that in the
past have moved from high to low tax states. The “no tax increase,” lame duck
Governor has, right on cue, called for “compromise.” Said Malloy, after having successfully
rebuffed during his entire two term administration Republican reforms targeting
the state’s permanent, long-term spending problems, “The time for compromise is
now” – now that dissenting voices have been rendered mute. “This,” Malloy said
of his current budget iteration, “is the best attempt to resolve this year’s
budget. It’s time to vote for a budget.”
Actually, it was time to vote for a budget the first week in
June, when the legislative year ran out.
Democrats -- among them a no-tax-increase governor who, as late as January 2017, had been
warning his fellow Democrats in the legislature that tax increases would drive
people and companies out of state --
had no budget to present to their fellow legislators, most of their time having
been spent preventing Republicans from bringing to the floor of the General Assembly for consideration a budget, vetted
and pronounced balanced by the Office Of Fiscal Analysis by June, that
contained no tax increases, realized savings by the privatization of some state
services, and did not, as a future Malloy proposal would do, progressively
shift a third of employee pension payments to municipalities that already had
firmed up their own budgets.
Democrats lacked a budget because they were waiting upon the
governor to conclude contract negotiations with state employee unions, which
were completed July 18. These terms, soon baked into budget considerations,
were highly favorable to much petted state unions. Having baked the cake, Democrats
determined it still was not time to present a budget.
And now in September, the time has arrived. And the budget
Democrats are asking spurned Republicans in the legislature to accept does not
solve any of the state’s recurring crises and likely will be out of balance
soon after it is passed, assuming it survives Republican opposition.
Republican leader in the State Senate Len Fasano thinks
Malloy’s revised budget should not survive close scrutiny.
“The governor’s proposal,” Fasano said, “would be the third
billion-dollar tax hike for Connecticut in less than seven years. It includes
tax increases totaling $1.3 billion over the biennium. And this from a governor
who pledged to not lead with taxes! I see no structural budgetary changes of
consequence in the governor’s plan that would check some of the fastest rising
costs of state government going forward. Obviously, the Senate Democrats are on
board with the governor’s billion-dollar tax hike plan. Speaking for all
Republicans, I can say that this does not drive us closer to a bipartisan
budget deal.”
Malloy’s newest budget plan leads with tax increases
repugnant to most Connecticut voters who find they have no money in the till to
pay yet another tax grab. The notion that further taxes are necessary to save
municipalities from a progressive scheme, devised by Democrats, to shift state
educational funding from so called rich to so called poor towns is –
unintentionally, of course – laughable; quite on a par with the arsonist who
sets your basement on fire and promises to mitigate the trouble he has caused
by calling the fire department, if you will kindly pay him a fee.
New Canaan is one of the “rich” municipalities Democrats
hope to save by increasing taxes $1.3 billion over the biennium, so that cash
strapped state government will be able to reduce state cuts to municipalities
that have successfully managed their budgets over the years, unlike the state’s
Capital City, Hartford, now threatening to declare bankruptcy unless the state
ponies up bailout money.
Chris DeMuth Jr., a
businessman in New Canaan, explodes the artful imposture in an op-ed recently
published by the NCAdvertiser. Noting that “New Canaan taxpayers send
hundreds of millions of dollars to our state government in return for the
government sending about 1% of that money back to our town,” DeMuth describes
the three main elements of the Malloy plan: “1) Eliminate the few dollars of
state funds that manage to make it back home; 2) Keep the mandates. We used to
have strings attached. Now we just get the strings; 3) Shift the burden of
their reckless fiscal policies to us.”
Punishing successful municipalities -- New Canaan, and
others -- and rewarding unsuccessful municipalities – Hartford, and others – cannot
be, by any reckoning, a successful political program.
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