Let’s begin by asserting an incontrovertible truth: Things happen in politics the way they do because a dominant political organization has so arranged things to happen the way they do. That is what politics is – a deliberated ordering of the polis by a body charged with securing the safety and prosperity of the state.
Corollary truths emerge from this general rule. Politics is
nothing other than active measures; therefore, only those who are able in a
functioning republic to pass measures through a legislature are active
politicians. Those who sit out the game on the bench may add their voices to a
general discussion of political issues, but voices in politics matter far less
than political presence and active measures.
To put it in the simplest way possible – presence is the sum
of politics, and minority parties lack presence.
In Connecticut, Democrats have for many years enjoyed a huge
governing margin over Republicans. The major cities in the state have been
owned by Democrats for nearly half a century; Democrats outnumber Republicans
in the General Assembly by nearly veto proof margins; and the last two Democrat
Governors, the prickly Dannel Malloy and Ned Lamont, less prickly but attached
to moderate and progressive Democrats by adamantine ideological and political
ties, have been strongmen Governors. Of the two, Lamont has been far stronger,
because the Coronavirus pandemic had persuaded leading Democrats in the General
Assembly to cede their legislative authority, along with their constitutional
obligations, to their state’s chief executive, a sort of minor league Caesar.
The budget crunch in Connecticut at the end of every
legislative session resembles nothing so much as a multi vehicle crackup on one
of the state’s poorly financed – so state Democrats assert -- major highways.
In a flow technology, you have only to stack the flow momentarily to create
what a postmodern Machiavellian politician might call creative destruction, indispensable
to aggressive, left of center political reformers. And what is destroyed when politics in the
state is dammed by busy political beavers is democracy, in all its
multitudinous iterations.
The question that should arise in the minds of
pro-democratic – note the small “d” – forces in the state when democracy is
thus not so subtly undermined is cui bono,
who is the beneficiary of the crackup? In every political transaction, someone,
usually a favored political interest, reaps a private good at the expense of
the public good.
Who then, we may ask, benefits by the unnecessary separation
of bills and implementation measures? Connecticut’s General Assembly first
passes a bill and later, at the end of session, passes separately what is
called enabling legislation, without which bills or political measures cannot
constitutionally be implemented.
The constitutional amendment establishing a cap on spending
in 1991, when then Governor Lowell Weicker’s state income tax measure was finally
adopted, lacked necessary implementing definitions. Many years after the income
tax had been flooding the state’s treasury with new tax receipts, then Attorney
General George Jepsen discovered the lack of enabling definitions and correctly
pronounced inoperative the constitutional cap on spending, which had been inserted into
the income tax measure to still fears that the new income tax would lead to
disastrous increases in spending – as, indeed, has happened.
If the absence of implementing
definitions was intentional, the intent easily could be ascribed to the crush
of legislation at the end of the 1991 fiscal year. There are political benefits
to Connecticut’s usual end of year budget crunch. It cannot, however, be
asserted that the inoperative spending cap benefited the general public.
Likewise, the public good is not advanced by an omnibus end of year enabling
bill that escapes close scrutiny by legislators constitutionally obligated to
oversee taxation and spending.
Why is the end of year budget crackup not better managed by
Connecticut dominant legislative majority acting in concert with the last two
Democrat Governors? Who benefits when major budget enabling legislation cannot
be intelligently debated – or even read, some legislators will acknowledge –
during the last few hours of a legislative session?
This matter is not unfixable. The end of session bill or bills known as the “implementer,” a massive little read Pandora’s box of policy provisions necessary to implement the state budget -- is generally stuffed with amendments that may include broad policy reforms that didn’t make it into other legislation or changes meant to assist one group or town. Separate implementers can be written into the bills to which they pertain. And the final curtain at the end of session need not be rung down before legislators have had an opportunity to properly consider and debate in an open forum the last act of the political season’s play.
But legislators would rather have political leaders in caucuses
decide the fate of bills at the last minute because such a process benefits…
fill in the blank.
Cui bono? Who benefits?
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