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Can Centrist Democrats Save Their Party?


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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