’The Republicans were very proud of
producing what they called a bipartisan budget, but I call it a Republican
bipartisan budget,’ Malloy said. ‘And as soon as they got heat for making a
decision, they want to cut and run. But not only do they want to cut and run,
they want to cut and run and make the deficit worse. And what was the first
thing they did? Raise taxes. Everything they said was a fraud and they admitted
that when they raised taxes. And what’s the first thing after they raise taxes
and get some heat over something? They want to come back and make the deficit worse.
Sounds like other Republican governors from our state whose names I
recognize.’”
How do sensible reporters manage to keep a straight face when the governor pushes
out campaign propaganda in this fashion? The budget compromise Malloy is
referencing, as with all other budgets in the past half century, is a Democrat
budget. Malloy here conveniently forgets that he vetoed a Republican budget that passed both houses of the General Assembly. And on whose watch, pray tell, has the current deficit and all the preceding
deficits of the Malloy administration "become worse?" And why have
the deficits become worse? Hold that question, rarely answered honestly by
Malloy, for a moment.
Was there no reporter in the room to put such cut to the quick questions
to Malloy as he reeled off his pointless campaign pitch? Was no one curious that the pitch had been
uttered by a governor who, quite literally, has “cut and run?”
Unwilling to stand for re-election on his dismal record in
office, Malloy a few months ago lame-ducked himself, which is to say – he has
shown himself unwilling to stand before the bar of public opinion in his own
state and defend his indefensible record in office. Malloy’s approval rating
hovers around 25 percent; with this kind of negative approval, the former Mayor
of Stamford could not be elected dog-catcher in Stamford.
His two tax increases, both the largest and the second
largest in Connecticut history, did not go down well with a) people who voted
against his tax increases with their feet and either left or are considering
leaving the state, and b) business, some like Aetna, home-grown anchoring
institutions, that have shaken the dust of Connecticut from their feet and laid
plans to move, implausibly as it seems, to New York City. General Electric months
ago moved to “Taxachusetts.” In two terms, Malloy has reverse the traditional
flow of business from high to formerly low tax states like Connecticut.
Repeated business punishing tax increases, beginning with former Governor
Lowell Weicker’s game changing income tax and continuing unabated through the
Malloy administration, have “leveled the
playing field” – and with it Connecticut’s advantage over high tax bordering
states.
So, what is Malloy up to?
A couple of things: he is trying to salvage his record in
office from close scrutiny and, at the same time, provide Malloy Democrats – is
there any other kind in the Democrat General Assembly hegemon? -- with a utilitarian
script for upcoming elections in 2018, which will occur a little less than ten
years BEFORE the union deal negotiated between Malloy and SEBAC is due to elapse.
That deal, which includes a provision awarding salary and benefit increases to
state workers after (three) years, and continues crippling state employee labor
contracts enforceable by courts to the year 2027, strips the next governor,
Democrat or Republican, of a tool often used by Malloy to balance chronically
out of balance budgets – the Malloy-SEBAC deal includes a fatal no-lay-off
provision -- as it delivers to union chiefs a welcomed arrangement that, to
quote Senator Edith Prague during an earlier Malloy-union contract negotiation
session, union chiefs “would be insane to reject.”
Well, the union chiefs were not insane. Turn of the century Tammany Hall boss George
Washington Plunkitt once boasted “I seen my opportunities, and I took’em.” So too with union
bosses in Connecticut. Malloy, during his two terms in office, was betting that
propaganda of a kind we often see during elections would overcome common sense.
On the one hand, people’s senses, and some few honest newspaper editorial
boards, were telling the great unwashed that there is a reckoning coming that
will obliterate Connecticut’s advantages with respect to bordering states. On
the other hand, progressive campaign propaganda has for many years in Connecticut ruled the
roost. Never underestimate the power of demagoguery, Mark Twain warned: “Whiskey
is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues.”
Events in Connecticut –the flight to other states of entrepreneurial
capital and entrepreneurs – have taught the state, if not Malloy, that demagoguery
may have its limits.
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