Skip to main content

The Fifth Democrat Budget


“When the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him” -- Napoleon

That the compromise budget is predominantly a Democrat production should come as a surprise to no one. Weighing gains and losses in the scales, the left in Connecticut, best represented by Speaker of the State House Joe Aresimowicz, a union employee, has prevailed over its opponents.

The state’s Capital City, Hartford, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, will receive a bailout from state taxpayers, at best a temporary solution to long- brewing, unresolved problems centering on the city’s hegemonic political structure, and a virtual guarantee that the city’s political shakers and movers will be bellying up to the bailout bar again in the not too distant future. UConn funding, cut in the Republican budget that had passed both Houses of the General Assembly, has been restored. Major changes in employee pensions, a prominent feature in the Republican budget, were dropped – but not, Republicans remind us, as a campaign issue.

Democrats yielded on shifting teacher pension costs to municipalities, a major feature of Governor Dannel Malloy’s rule by executive order regime. Republicans did succeed in imposing a cap on state spending as well as limits on the bonding of long-term capital projects, though they would be wise to make certain that proper enabling legislation is attached to the measures.  Some months ago, Attorney General George Jepsen advised that the constitutional cap on spending, a feature of the Governor Lowell Weicker income tax measure, was unconstitutional because the General Assembly had never supplied definitions necessary to enable the bill.

Taxes, a litmus test issue for Republicans, will be increasing – again. Malloy, the outgoing Democratic Governor has now, with the concurrence of the dominant Democrat General Assembly, raised taxes three times. The lame-duck Governor is the author and inspiration of the largest and second largest tax increases in state history, one of the reasons his approval rating is in the tank. In a pot calling the kettle black political strategy, much will be made by Democrats in upcoming campaigns of Republican duplicity on their unbudgeable no tax increase pledges, although it will be obvious to all that Republicans yielded to a superior political force wielded by Democrats. Not sweet reason -- Democrats were never interested in palavering with Republicans on budget matters -- but superior force and numbers wielded by Democrats shaped the final budget product.   

Malloy’s reaction to the compromise budget was, some think, bitter – possibly because he was excluded from deliberations on what many hope may be the final budget product in Connecticut – but perfectly in keeping with his overbearing nature. General Assembly members wanted a budget they could live with; which is to say, they wanted a budget they could campaign on. Malloy, who bade goodbye to future campaigns months ago, need no longer struggle to run on his lamentable record in office. Had he chosen to run again, he doubtless would have sunk the re-election prospects of his fellow Democrats.

The compromise budget – such as it is – should be considered a prelude to the upcoming 2018 elections.

Most savvy Democrats instinctively understand they need to put some distance between non-lame duck Democrat legislators and Malloy, Connecticut’s self-immolating Governor. And it is this perception that has made them amenable to compromise, even as it has raised Malloy’s hackles.


If Malloy does veto the compromise budget, “the bad” will be on Democrats. If the budget in its current form is not vetoed or passes as a result of a successful veto override, both Republicans and Democrats will be able to run in the upcoming elections as pragmatic compromisers. In the seemingly endless prelude to the budget, both parties had staked out positions on the economy and society that are widely divergent, the cause, some commentators have said, of the long budget standoff. With the passage at last of a compromise budget, divergence between both parties will increase rather than diminish – because this divergence is rooted in two competing and opposite visions of government. Never in Connecticut history has it been more true that the destination of the state will depend on the road taken as determined by upcoming elections, which is simply a way of saying that votes will determine Connecticut’s now precarious future. And this time there will be no retreat from the road that will, in Robert Frost’s formulation, “make all the difference.” 



        

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p