CTMirror notes in a recent story
that minority leader in the state House of Representations Themis Klarides has
voiced her concern often enough that “when Democrats expanded their lead in the
House and regained control of the Senate — that the majority is gearing up to
spend recklessly… ‘All we have heard
from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle has been more, bigger, and
let’s expand,’ Klarides said.”
Effective Republican resistance to spending increases, always a matter
of numbers in the General Assembly, will be severely reduced in the new
session.
Remarks at the opening of the General Assembly made by newly
re-installed President Pro Tem of the
Senate Martin Looney, who can be relied upon to set in stone Democrat goals in
the chamber for the new Lamont administration, demonstrate that the Republican
spending firewall has collapsed.
As is the case with most progressives in the General
Assembly, Looney wants more: paid leave; a raise in the minimum wage; equitable
justice, i.e. a “second chance’ reentry of
convicted criminals into the non-criminal community; enlightened
policies; a nurturing, supportive government; affordable housing, patient
centered health care; superb education, including child care so that children
will no longer be poisoned by a feeling of failure; the elimination of barriers that
separate our communities; regional cooperation and much more.
Looney did not mention whether he would favor the
elimination of municipal governments, presumptive “walls” that separate our
communities, so that his vision of a true community of souls may be more
perfectly realized. Enlightened policies in the future presumably will be those
favored by the progressive Looney in the Senate and the even more progressive
Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz.
Republican battalions in the General Assembly were decimated
in state elections. Purely as a practical, mathematical matter, Republicans
will have a voice but not a vote that matters in the Lamont era. More precisely,
Republican votes will matter only as a voice of easily overridden opposition. However,
if the recently concluded election taught Republicans anything, it is this: It
is better to be vocal than mute. Silence in law and politics signifies assent.
Columnist Chris Powell wrote in the Journal
Inquirer prior to Governor Ned Lamont’s State of the State address before the
General Assembly, “During his campaign and the preparation of his
administration Lamont endorsed or smiled upon nearly every liberal objective --
a higher minimum wage, free college, more free medical care, paid family leave,
property tax relief, another ineffectual rewriting of the municipal school aid
formula, and so forth. He has assured all the grasping Democratic
constituencies that he has no ideas of his own and wouldn't dare question their
premises.”
If Powell is right, Lamont will be led down the spending
aisle by the usual usher, Democrat progressives in the General Assembly far
more experienced in the ways of governing than the untried governor, whose
experience in legislative matters is at least as shallow as that of his
Republican opponent, Bob Stefanowski.
All the talk about Connecticut “reinventing itself” may be a
prelude to “more of the same” reformist tendencies. Former Governor Lowell
Weicker, quoted in one story as having said of Lamont “I think he’ll be a great
governor — not a good one, a great one — better than Lowell Weicker,"
reinvented even Connecticut when he rammed an income tax through a resistant
legislature, vetoing three non-income-tax balanced budgets. Departing Governor
Dan Malloy reinvented Connecticut anew when he imposed on the state two income
tax increases that, taken together, represent the largest tax increase of any
administration in state history. And here we are – in low-dive competing with
New York in a race to the bottom.
Re-invention is very much overrated. What Thomas Paine said
about the character of a man applies as well to the character of a state:
"Character is much easier kept than recovered." It is much sounder
political strategy to preserve live traditions rather than engaging in fatal
re-inventions.
Connecticut already HAS a character that fortunately has not been
entirely eviscerated by years of imprudent taxing and spending. One must listen
very closely to progressives in the state legislature to discover their plans,
if any, to cut spending permanently and long-term. Instead, we have had during
the eight years of the Malloy administration a government that reformed
everything but government, which has been growing at an alarming pace ever
since Weicker – who believes that Lamont will be a great governor, even “better
than Lowell Weicker" – changed the fixed character of Connecticut by
making it more like Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New York, hardly a model of prudent
governance.
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