The matter of trust in government always lies like a dagger
in the clenched fists of the disenchanted. It was American lawyer, newspaper
editor and politician Gideon John
Tucker (1826-1899) who said “no man’s life, liberty, or property is safe
while the Legislature is in session.”
The CTMirror report is titled, Lamont:
Trust me. GOP lawmakers: Why should we? The title may leave behind the impression that only quarrelsome
Republican legislators mistrust the usual Democrat hegemony in the General
Assembly. What else is new?
That clearly is not
true. It has been mistrust – not to speak of mistreatment – that has caused in
Connecticut a lingering ten year recession that elsewhere in the country ended
in the second quarter of 2009. Businesses have moved out of state; so have
people. “Connecticut ranks third from last nationally on United Van Lines’
annual study of outbound moves, with New Jersey dead bottom,” The
Hour tells us.
This year, as
Connecticut families gather for Thanksgiving, the number of people at the table
giving thanks to God – not state government -- will have been thinned. Not
present will be active workers who have moved, along with their businesses, to
other states; recent Connecticut graduates who have carried their very
expensive, tax supported sheepskins to less expensive, less predatory states;
and, of course, the old geezers who have moved to Florida because their lumbagos are acting up.
Every time a young
worker moves out of state, Connecticut’s revenue is diminished over the years
depending upon how young the expat is. If he or she is, say 22, the average age
of college graduates, the state of Connecticut stands to lose about 55 years in
tax receipts, both municipal and state. Those chairs at the Thanksgiving feast,
either empty or occupied by out of state family members, are very expensive
indeed. Former Governor Jodi Rell has long since moved to Florida, and while
former Governor Dan Malloy may or may not be home for Thanksgiving, he will not
be shoveling sales tax cash into the Connecticut treasury both he and Lamont
have broadened and deepened so long as he is occupied, as Chancellor of Maine’s
University system, enjoying the winter weather. Like Connecticut, Maine has a
progressive income tax, and its total
tax burden is higher than
Connecticut’s, but its sales tax is among the lowest in the nation.
Not everyone who has
voted against the Connecticut legislature with their feet has lumbago, and it
is not only winter that is thinning the herd of milch cows.
Whence all this
mistrust?
Despite a new
constitutional “lock-box” provision specifically created to prevent legislators
from transferring to the general fund tax receipts designated for other
purposes, “just last June,” CTMirror reports, “Lamont and his fellow Democrats
in the legislature blocked a major infusion of sales tax revenues earmarked for
the Special Transportation Fund.” Fake lock-boxes and caps on spending are the
rule rather than the exception in Connecticut’s government. The constitutional
cap on spending attached to the Lowell Weicker income tax, largely to persuade
wavering legislators to vote for the income tax bill, was invalid and unenforceable,
Attorney
General George Jepsen advised 24
years after the income tax had been inaugurated, because the state legislature
had neglected to provide legal definitions to trigger the cap.
Given easily
pilfered lock-boxes, inoperable constitutional caps on spending, diversions of
tax receipts from the transportation to the general fund, the alarming growth
of dedicated funding that cannot be cut, the flight of entrepreneurial capital
to less predatory states, and the
disposition of legislators to escape the necessity of spending reduction through
repeated tax increases, is it any wonder that there is in Connecticut a trust
deficit among middle class workers who fund the government, and a quite
understandable reluctance on their part to embrace new sources of revenue?
The more they get, the more they spend; the more they spend, the more they need; the more they need, the more they tax. That is an accurate thumb-nail sketch of Connecticut’s legislative history for the past three decades. Lamont has now discovered a 3.2 billion gap in the state budget. How much of that gap will be back-filled by permanent, long-term spending cuts, rather than long term permanent taxes? And is this the kind of government any reasonable nutmegger should trust with his life, liberty and property?
The more they get, the more they spend; the more they spend, the more they need; the more they need, the more they tax. That is an accurate thumb-nail sketch of Connecticut’s legislative history for the past three decades. Lamont has now discovered a 3.2 billion gap in the state budget. How much of that gap will be back-filled by permanent, long-term spending cuts, rather than long term permanent taxes? And is this the kind of government any reasonable nutmegger should trust with his life, liberty and property?
Having taken the
temperature of voters in Connecticut, Republican leader Vincent
Candelora of North Branford
said “I don’t hear the desire to go in the direction of tolls. There are trust
issues with the public. There are trust issues in the building. I never want to
lead a solution with revenue. I would rather look toward finding efficiencies,
rather than finding a new revenue source.”
Why are new revenue
sources – i.e. tolls of any shape or size – imprudent? Answer: if you introduce
a new revenue stream into Connecticut's already swollen and raging revenue river,
you relieve the lazy legislative louts Tucker referenced from the necessity of
cutting spending, which is good for the louts but bad for everyone else.
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