As the New Year’s Eve midnight clock passed 12:00, Connecticut and the nation entered election year 2022. How does one know one has entered an election year?
“With [Governor Ned] Lamont and the entire legislature up
for reelection in November,” a Hartford paper tells us, “the race is on to see
which taxes may be cut this year.” Voters tend to respond favorably to tax
cuts. The title of the story emblazoned on the paper’s front page read, “State legislators weighing tax cuts.”
“Weighing” is the operative word. Then too, there are
important differences between tax cuts and tax credits. A practical discussion
implies legislative cordiality and bipartisan agreement. None of the discussions
have yet been written in stone.
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora warned that the
Republican plan may not be embraced by “liberal Democrats.” However, the very
presence of an upcoming election, he noted, “does change people’s behavior.” Candelora
and the Republicans, at this early stage in the discussion, want to restore
Connecticut’s property tax credit to its previous maximum of $500.
The credit not too long ago had been reduced to a maximum of
$200, and cutbacks in eligibility had been engineered to “save money for the
state,” Democrat leaders said. Following the progressive change, only senior
citizens and those with dependents were eligible for the credit. “Previously,
any residential property owner, subject to income limits,” according to the
Harford paper, “could claim a dollar for dollar credit for taxes that they paid
on their home or car.” The Republican plan would restore the tax credit as it
had existed before all the legislative finagling, largely by Democrats bowing
to progressive revisionism.
Pleas from Republicans that “the state could cut taxes only
until the end of 2022, and then revisit the idea again in 2023” depending upon
whether or not the economy improves, have
found favor with House Speaker Matt Ritter. A cut in the state sales tax
from 6.35% to 5.99%, starting in February and lasting only through the end of
the year, prompted a compliment from Ritter: “I have to give them [Republicans]
credit. I thought that [temporary tax credits] was a very interesting concept.”
Actually, temporary tax credits have been standard fare
among progressive Connecticut Democrats who favor permanent spending increases,
long-term tax increases and easily revocable tax credits that may be
effortlessly adjusted up or down. Real long-term tax cuts and real long-term spending
increases bear this in common: neither is painlessly adjusted, both require
legislators to vote a tax increase or decrease up or down, and both serve
different and contradictory purposes.
Republicans traditionally favor reliable, long term tax cuts
because past practice has shown marginal tax cuts increase creative industrial
productivity. Real long-term tax cuts also boost revenues, state and federal. To
put the matter in terms liberal President
John F. Kennedy often used, the consequent “rising [economic] tide”
occasioned by increased business activity, a by-product of reductions in
marginal taxation, “lifts all the boats,” including state revenue infrequently
used by progressives to aid the poor.
Progressive Democrats, on the other hand, favor punishing taxes
applied to millionaires, and rely upon “fair share” taxes, rarely defined, to
pay for often improvident spending, while loftily overlooking mounting state
debt. Connecticut’s state debt, among the highest in the nation, presently is
cresting at $57 billion.
Democrats this election season will be relying on temporary
funding to finance their newest and most expensive spending spree. The federal
handouts of the Biden administration are themselves temporary. The Connecticut
tax credits mentioned above are likewise temporary. And we all know what
happens when temporary revenue enhancements collide with permanent spending
increases. Debt piles up and, as fixed costs rise and debt is whittled down, it
becomes less and less possible to cope. Conservative Prime Minister Maggie
Thatcher once asked socialists in Great Britain what they planned to do once
they had “run out of other people’s money.” Having equitized and flat lined
wages and assets in the general population, they resort, as all tyrants do, to
obvious lies and persuasive naked force.
In countries in which politicians place the common good
above their own private good, tyranny will find no foothold. The public virtue
celebrated by John Adams – “Our Constitution was made for virtuous people, and
no others” – is our surety against force and subversive lies.
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