Skip to main content

Connecticut’s Detour


Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… W. B. Yeats 

It seems ages ago that a major newspaper in Connecticut firmly decided that Connecticut was suffering from a spending rather than a revenue problem; meaning that budget deficits in the future should be liquidated by spending cuts and not tax increases.

Naturally, few politicians, chiefly those on the Democrat side of the political barricades, paid much attention to this change of heart and mind. Faced with chronic and continuing budget deficits – the state’s present biennial budget deficit is about $4 billion – Connecticut’s Democrat politicians continued piling on tax increases. Former Governor Dan Malloy, who retired from office following his second term, was a chronic revenue increaser, aided, of course, by a Democrat dominated General Assembly. Malloy’s approval rating plummeted more or less in concert with his tax increases, and he left office the least popular governor in the nation with an approval rating hovering around 25 percent.

We now find that Malloy’s replacement, Governor Ned Lamont, has an approval rating of 33 percent after only 100 days in office. An approval rating this low, this early – particularly after a blue election wave had wiped out Republican gains in the General Assembly -- might cause some discomfort to the usual politician, but low approval ratings did not serve as a check to Malloy, who pretended to the last moment that he would not trim his policy sails to the prevailing popularity winds. The same may be said of Lamont, despite claims that Lamont lacks Malloy’s discomforting porcupine quills. Lamont enjoys a numerical cushion similar to that of Malloy during the early days of his administration. Democrats presently have the luxury of overwhelming numbers in the General Assembly, which provides the ruling majority with a large margin for policy experimentation and error. During the recently concluded November elections, Senate Democrats won 23 seats to Republicans’ 13; the spread before the election had been 18-18. And in the House Democrats won 92 seats to Republican’s 59, a gain for Democrats of 12 seats. In power politics, numbers always trump democracy.

Lamont, only 100 days into his administration, appears to be caught between a rock, progressive ideological irredentism in Connecticut, and a hard place. The hard place is very hard indeed. After multiple revenue increases, the state still is facing daunting budget deficits. Lamont’s solution to the hard place is to raise revenue by means of unpopular tolls and a broadening of consumption taxes, solutions made necessary by unwillingness on the part of a Democrat Majority in the General Assembly to confront spending escalators such as the high cost of labor among unionized state workers.

The rock is a newly installed progressivism, an ideological lockbox seemingly impervious to reality that presents special difficulties not confronted in the past by a cool-centered Democrat Party, one that historically had been willing to seek common ground with minority Republicans in pursuit of policies that benefited the greater good. Moderate Democrats have been pushed from their power perches almost everywhere in the Northeast, and it is doubtful the vacated traditional Democrat center can hold for long within a party moved eccentrically by leftists. Should socialist Bernie Sanders win his party’s presidential nod, his primary victory will send a signal to the entire nation, sleepily going about its business, that the new quasi-socialist Democratic Party is no longer their daddy’s and mommy’s party. Ideas and politics both have consequences.

Lamont recently busted into a “No Tolls CT” rally in his hometown of Greenwich. He thanked the group for allowing him to handle a few uncomfortable questions and said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt your party,” to which a very polite Patrick Sasser co-founder of the “No Tolls CT” movement, replied with excessive civility – this was, after all, Greenwich -- “Sorry you weren’t in the office the other day when I presented 100,000 signatures” on petitions collected across the state opposing tolls.

Lamont responded, “You can say, ‘No tolls,’ but you’ve got to say what you’re for. Are you for bonding? Are you for doing nothing? You have to have an alternative.”

But of course bonding is not the opposite of tolling. Both are means of collecting tax revenue from people already suffering the predictable consequences of excessive spending – which produces debt. The opposite of both tolling and bonding is permanent, long-term cuts in spending. Spending is the problem; cutting spending is the solution to the problem, and anything else – income tax increases, consumption tax increases, broadening the tax base, bonding, filching funds from laughably insecure “lock-boxes,” etc. exacerbates the problem.

According to one account of the Greenwich “party,” Lamont beat a retreat as party goers sought to engage the governor further. “Hey everybody,” the Governor said, “I don’t want to be a downer here, so thank you so much for the chance to be back here.”

Lamont’s appearance at the party was a detour in the rush to increase taxes and imprint on the public memory a politically pleasing narrative, so that the ruling left-of-center Democrat Party in Connecticut will in the future be able to increase spending yet again – the easy road most often traveled by modern progressive politicians -- and the spending increases will lead ineluctably to further deficits.





Comments

Unknown said…
Patrick Sasser was truly gracious!

Popular posts from this blog

The PURA soap opera continues in Connecticut: Business eyeing the exit signs

The trouble at PURA and the two energy companies it oversees began – ages ago, it now seems – with the elevation of Marissa Gillett to the chairpersonship of Connecticut’s Public Utilities Regulation Authority.   Connecticut Commentary has previously weighed in on the controversy: PURA Pulls The Plug on November 20, 2019; The High Cost of Energy, Three Strikes and You’re Out? on December 21, 2024; PURA Head Butts the Economic Marketplace on January 3, 2025; Lamont Surprised at Suit Brought Against PURA on February 3, 2025; and Lamont’s Pillow Talk on February 22, 2025:   The melodrama full of pratfalls continues to unfold awkwardly.   It should come as no surprise that Gillett has changed the nature and practice of the state agency. She has targeted two of Connecticut’s energy facilitators – Eversource and Avangrid -- as having in the past overcharged the state for services rendered. Thanks to the Democrat controlled General Assembly, Connecticut is no l...

The Murphy Thingy

It’s the New York Post , and so there are pictures. One shows Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy canoodling with “Courier Newsroom publisher Tara McGowan, 39, last Monday by the bar at the Red Hen, located just one mile north of Capitol Hill.”   The canoodle occurred one day or night prior to Murphy’s well-advertised absence from President Donald Trump’s recent Joint Address to Congress.   Murphy has said attendance at what was essentially a “campaign rally” involving the whole U.S. Congress – though Democrat congresspersons signaled their displeasure at the event by stonily sitting on their hands during the applause lines – was inconsistent with his dignity as a significant part of the permanent opposition to Trump.   Reaching for his moral Glock Murphy recently told the Hartford Courant that Democrat Party opposition to President Donald Trump should be unrelenting and unforgiving: “I think people won’t trust you if you run a campaign saying that if Donald Trump is ...

Lamont Surprised at Suit Brought Against PURA

Marissa P. Gillett, the state's chief utility regulator, watches Gov. Ned Lamont field questions about a new approach to regulation in April 2023. Credit: MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Concerning a suit brought by Eversource and Avangrid, Connecticut’s energy delivery agents, against Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Agency (PURA), Governor Ned Lamont surprised most of the state’s political watchers by affecting surprise.   “Look,” Lamont told a Hartford Courant reporter shortly after the suit was filed, “I think it is incredibly unhelpful,” Lamont said. “Everyone is getting mad at the umpires.   Eversource is not getting everything they want and they are bringing suit. It was a surprise to me. Nobody notified me. I think we have to do a better job of working together.”   Lamont’s claim is far less plausible than the legal claim made by Eversource and Avangrid. The contretemps between Connecticut’s energy distributors and Marissa Gillett , Gov. Ned Lamont’s ...