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| Haskell and Hillary |
In “Lamont eyes emergency budget cuts, even as
reserves swell,” Phaneuf notes 1) that the reductions are minor rescissionary
cuts, and 2) that the deficit Governor Ned Lamont seeks to reduce through his
rescission authority represents a piddling “0.1 percent of the General Fund.”
Phaneuf notes, “Ned Lamont has also recently raised the specter of emergency
budget cuts — something his predecessor did frequently to the consternation of
the General Assembly.”
The “specter” of long-term permanent spending cuts freezes
the marrow in the bones of Connecticut’s improvident, big-spenders. “Be bold,
be bold,” the brave redeemer is told in the fairytale, “but not too bold, lest
the marrow of thy blood run cold.”
The Democrat dominated General Assembly may in the past have
raised concerns over the use of former Governor Dannel Malloy’s rescission authority, but
this consternation, one suspects, was largely for show. In using or misusing
his authority to cut spending by dictate, Malloy was relieving his fellow Democrats
from the necessity of making significant cuts whenever repeated deficits
appeared on the horizon. In some cases the deficits were due to misleading and over-optimistic
revenue projections. Then too, the Democrat dominated General Assembly was used
to shifting funds out of mistitled “lock-boxes” to the general fund in order to
cover marginal deficits, which leaves holes, to be back-filled later, in the
pilfered accounts.
Connecticut’s spendthrift legislature has many times shown
itself uninterested in doing what legislatures are constitutionally obligated
to do – finance obligations through general fund revenue and avoid driving
taxpayers, future revenue, from the state through excessive taxation. If one
rules out financing future debt through punishing tax increases, only one
curative course remains – cut spending. And progressive Democrats are, for
obvious reasons, loathed to cut spending, thereby alienating pampered special
interests, mostly state employee unions, that regularly contribute to Democrat reelections to office.
It has been said that the American Republic will endure
until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's
money.
In “seeking to bribe the public with the public’s money,” the
bribers always have many more than four aces up their sleeves. Cleverly
presented political deception involves making the public think it is receiving
a benefit, when in fact the received benefit is slight and does not answer the
political problem for which the “benefit” is a prescriptive cure. And the cost
of the benefit, of course, always is many times more expensive than it is
worth.
Lamont, CTMirror
notes, is using his emergency powers to make negligible cuts in spending while
sitting on a massive nest egg: “Lamont is taking aim at the $28 million deficit
projection even as analysts estimate a new savings program in the current
budget holds a $318 million windfall. In other words, under old budget rules,
instead of a $28 million deficit projection, Connecticut would be anticipating
a $290 million surplus.”
Where, then is the
emergency?
Lamont would say
that the nest egg is insurance against an anticipated recession. Most
economists would agree that, while there may be a bump in the road in 2020, there
will be no recession. “For the time being,” The
Motley Fool advises, “the
longest economic expansion in U.S. history looks poised to continue.” Statistics
show that “since 1945, the average recession in the U.S. has lasted less than
one year.”
But not in
Connecticut. The state has yet to recover jobs lost during the Great Recession,
which ended in June 2009. Here in the land of steady habits, recessions last 10
years and more, possibly because Connecticut is used to partially paying down
debt – or not – through tax increases, which prolong recoveries. The state is
carrying on its shoulders a massive state worker pension debt. Service on the
debt now accounts for 13 percent of Connecticut’s annual budget, or $2.9
billion in 2019, according to the Office of Fiscal Analysis. And service represents a “fixed cost” that
cannot be immediately reduced through legislative means. The reduction of
future fixed costs is certain to arouse the antipathy of state worker unions whose
members recently flooded a Town Hall in Westport’s Bedford Middle School to
cheer on toll taxes.
The
Town Hall meeting, packed
with union workers, was co-sponsored by newly installed State Representative
Will Haskell, who assured everyone that that the toll tax was a user fee, not a
tax. The toll tax is in fact a consumption tax that will be paid not by
truckers, who operate as tax collectors, but by consumers of goods and services
who will pay the tax in higher prices. Haskell’s truck only “user fees” will
fall most crushingly not on his District 26 constituents, but rather on poor
people who have not the advantage of living in toney Redding, Ridgefield, Wilton,
Westport, and New Canaan.
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