Speaker of the State House of Representatives Joe Aresimowicz
has planted his flag. He has announced he will call a vote on instituting a new
tax, congestion tolling, in Connecticut. “I’m not willing to walk away from
this session with doing nothing to solve this problem. Our job is to rep (sic)
the citizens of the state and make very difficult decisions for the betterment
of this state. This falls into that category for me.”
There is no need to pause here and discuss the touchy
question whether Aresimowicz properly understands what Connecticut's real problems
are. After two major tax increases, the largest and the second largest in state
history, inexorably followed by high and unsupportable deficits, the question –
is Connecticut suffering from a revenue or a spending problem? – has now been
settled. Even major newspapers that had in the past asserted Connecticut’s
budget problems had been caused by insufficient revenue have since repented and
now acknowledge the state has a serious spending problem that must be addressed.
There are Democrat critics in the state who wish their party
well, many of whom are now thinking: If the Democratic Party wishes to survive
in Connecticut, it must once again become a centrist party, and it can best do
this by selecting as Speaker of the House someone who is not Joe Aresimowicz,
the education coordinator with AFSCME.
Governor Dannel Malloy’s failures – there are a few of them
– can be attributed in part to his dangerous liaison with progressives. Malloy
permitted himself to be captured early on in his administration by union
interests he and other progressives found irresistible. The unions’ interests
were irresistible in part because Connecticut’s Democrat Party is in hock to
unions who support the party with contributions and tireless doorbell ringers
during political campaigns.
The Democrat Party – even in the days of centrist governors
such as Ella Grasso, John Dempsey and Abe Ribicoff – were closely associated
with unions, but Malloy’s centrist Democrat predecessors easily resisted
delivering the reins of government to SEBAC, the union conglomerate charged
with negotiating with chief executives long term, expensive, legally binding
contracts. The court enforceable contracts Malloy and SEBAC pushed out to 2027 cover
employee salaries and pensions, provide automatic salary increases after three
years and prevent future governors, Democrat or Republican, from using layoffs
to cut expenses.
These provisions do not settle – they unnecessarily deepen
-- serious problems. Continuing deficits and the flight of entrepreneurial
capital from Connecticut to more tax friendly states are certain indicators
that Connecticut no longer can afford to allow unions, in concert with chief
executives and courts, to determine the shape of future state expenses.
Many states set public employee salaries and pensions by
statute, which leaves legislatures, people's assemblies, rather than courts, in
command of constitutional getting and spending obligations. A necessary reform that
would return full budget-making authority to constitutionally assigned budget
makers has been circulating in Connecticut for a long while, but union friendly
Democrats, such as Aresimowicz in the state House and President Pro Tem of the
Senate Martin Looney, have served as firewalls preventing reformist Republicans
and Democrats from offering solutions that might induce progressive legislators
to make what Aresimowicz calls “difficult decisions for the betterment of this
state.”
It is not necessary to wait until Connecticut is a smoldering
ruin before remedial remedies are adopted. But saving Connecticut -- making
difficult decisions for the benefit of the state -- is causally related to
reform in Connecticut’s Democrat Party, which has been abducted by progressives
whose policies, far from being solutions to what ails the state, ARE AND HAVE BEEN THE PROBLEM.
Of course, we must not suppose that politicians will, once
having achieved office, faithfully execute all their campaign pledges – but campaigns
are indicative, pointers leading to the right or left, sign posts signaling
that the campaigner seeks to defend or change the status quo. The two Democrat gubernatorial campaigners who,
according to many commentators, appear most promising at the moment -- former Secretary
of State Susan Bysiewicz, who wrote a biography of Ella Grasso, and dragon
slayer Ned Lamont, who defeated sitting Senator Joe Lieberman in a Democrat primary
but lost to Lieberman in the general election – have yet to unfurl policy solutions
that might lead to the betterment of Connecticut, an ordeal that cannot be
permanently waved in favor of glib but glittering promises. Lamont trounced his competitors at a recent AFL-CIO convention in Hartford. A straw poll showed
him winning 48 percent of the delegate vote, while Bysiewicz received 11
percent.
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