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| Lowell Weicker |
CTMirror has put to bed – “debunked” – one hopes forever, the notion that the 1991 Weicker income tax was intended to be temporary. No doubt most people, when the tax was enacted, knew in their bones that nothing is so permanent as a temporary tax.
The notion, still quivering with life in 2019, that the Weicker
tax was to be temporary “said Emily Thorson, a Syracuse University political
scientist who has written articles about misinformation in politics and is
currently writing a book on the subject,” may have been the result “of people
trying to piece together information in a fragmented media environment.”
Yes indeed. Fragmentation occurs a good deal in campaigns, largely
owing to the yawning gap between campaigning and governing. Weicker strongly
intimated during his campaign for governor that there would be no income tax.
Instituting an income tax in the midst of a recession, he memorably said, would
be like “pouring gas on a fire.” Once elected governor, Weicker debunked his
own reservations against the tax by forcing the tax through a reluctant General
Assembly. It was a bit like driving a square peg into a round hole, but with a
little banging and political bribery – more common in politics than the
Democrat impeachers of President Donald Trump would have us believe -- the
Maverick governor got the job done.
It was obvious at the time that the income tax was to be permanent.
CTMirror quoted Weicker on the point: “When I sign this budget Connecticut will
be closing the book on its past, and it’ll be facing toward the future.” And,
the publication added, “The public record is unambiguous. On Feb. 13, 1991,
Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. told a joint session of the General Assembly of his
intention to make sweeping and permanent changes to Connecticut’s tax system —
sharply cutting the sales, corporations and investment income taxes and
imposing a tax on wages.”
Attached to the income tax bill was a constitutional provision
setting a cap on spending, an inducement to wavering legislators to vote in
favor of pouring gas on the income tax flame lit by Weicker. That cap, never
operative, was finally put to bed, decades later, by Attorney General George
Jepsen, who pointed out that the cap had always been inoperative because the
General Assembly had neglected to supply necessary definitions to enable the
fictitious cap. Not so with the income tax, which was swarming with
definitions.
Pro income tax supporter Bill Cibes, who served for many years on
CTMirror’s board of directors, was appointed Office of Policy Management guru
in the new Weicker administration, and years later he served on the commission
that was to provide definitions to implement the inoperable constitutional cap
on spending. Cibes, called by the New York Times “Weicker’s shadow,” had urged the abolition of the
spending cap.
Politics itself is confusing because seasoned politicians are
masters in the art of befuddling the public. More often than not they are
successful.
The income tax was sold by Weicker as a broom that would sweep
into the dustbin all the niggling little taxes swamping Connecticut. Under the
first two Democrat Governors since 1991, the income tax had been raised by
Malloy, following campaign pledges not to raise
the tax further, and in the Lamont era all the niggling little taxes have
been broadened to include pretty much everything but tolls, a vampire that has
retreated to its coffin, there to await a more propitious moment.
Lamont, Weicker’s protege, campaigned on a truck only toll plan;
once elected, he switched to what must have been his default plan all along,
which involved 58 toll gantries on multiple state highways; then sensing the
smell of political grapeshot in the air, he proposed tolls on bridges that
would, once the bridges were repaired, be – wait for it – temporary.
Of course, we all know there is no such thing as a temporary tax.
But, years hence, after multiple tolls have permanently been erected on
multiple highways -- proceeds from the
tolls to be dumped into the state’s revenue catch basin, the general fund – how
many of the state’s commentators would be surprised should someone declare that
tolls taxes were supposed have been temporary?
This political confusion is the natural consequence of political chicanery.
One suspects that Emily Thorson's book, when it is finished, will be so large as
to be unreadable. And the real problem with the CTMirror report is not that it deservedly
killed a false notion, but rather that there are so many live debunkable notions prowling about Connecticut that are left unassaulted. As Oscar Wilde once said when a
socialist asked him why he had not bothered to make a careful study of
socialism: “My dear, there are only so many hours in the day.”
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ADDENDA
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ADDENDA
YANKEE BITES BACK -- According to the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Hartford Courant, Weicker pitched a sunset provision for state income tax multiple times in 1991, and the 1992 budget created a tax commission that “could conceivably ‘sunset’ the income tax in 1993,” according to the Boston Globe.
According to a July 12 article in the Hartford Courant, Weicker’s budget “includes one unexpected wrinkle – a proposal to have the entire revenue structure expire in 1994 unless readopted.”...
Weicker used the sunset provision to garner support among unwilling Connecticut legislators as 1991’s budget battle stretched into the summer months.
In a televised speech on July 17, 1991, Weicker offered to end the tax in 1993, which would have made the income tax essentially a one-year deal to boost state revenue. https://yankeeinstitute.org/2019/12/03/temporary-income-tax-myth-has-roots-in-weickers-pitch-to-lawmakers-public/?fbclid=IwAR0KyZrec4Wl56U3UXBaP_Au4aIObKJH6SsxqOXk0PYn_MpK7TEcUqi_cKI
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