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| Stefanowski -- Stamford Advocate |
As late as August 10, President Joe Biden, who has presided
over the worst national economy since stagflation President Jimmy Carter, hit
the airwaves to assure a doubtful nation that “the US had ‘zero inflation’ in
July. Hours earlier the federal Consumer Price Index data showed annual
inflation dipping
only slightly to 8.5%, which outraged Republicans and other critics who
pointed out it’s still near a four-decade high,” according to the New York Post.
Owing to a severe reduction in future supplies caused partly
by Biden’s war on fossil fuel, gas prices rose sharply throughout Biden’s
current term as President. According to AAA, Connecticut
now ranks 15th in US for highest gas prices: “Today's statewide
average for a gallon of self-service regular is $3.42, 11 cents higher than
last week and $1.25 higher than last year.
"’Compared to a year ago, it’s costing drivers about
$17 more to fill up their vehicles,’ says Fran Mayko, AAA Northeast
spokeswoman. ‘Unfortunately, however, it doesn't look like drivers will find
relief at the pump any time soon.’"
The law of supply and demand – when demand is a constant, a
reduction in supply causes price increases – is inflexible and not susceptible
to rhetorical flourishes.
The Lamont administration has responded to the gas shortage
crisis by – key word -- temporarily eliminating one of the
two taxes the state imposes on fuel. Normal, increased taxation will resume
after the 2022 November elections. Traditionally, the Connecticut dominated
General Assembly has abided by what is proving to be its unstated principle:
“All state tax cuts shall be temporary, all state tax increases shall be
permanent.”
State coffers were diminished by gas tax reductions, broadly
attributed to an increase in supply engineered by the much derided President
Donald Trump Administration. Connecticut currently is running what some
consider, during a time of rising consumer prices, an obscene surplus.
Other prices have risen as well. Of note in New England,
always subject to winters as frigid as the Democrat dominated General Assembly,
average energy prices in Connecticut far outpace national energy prices.
“On average,” Energy Sage reports, “electricity
users in Connecticut [emphasis
original] spend about $302 per month on
electricity. That adds up to $3,624 per year. That’s 31%
higher than the national average electric bill of $2,760.
The average electric rates in Connecticut cost 26 ¢/kilowatt-hour (kWh), so
that means that the average electricity customer in Connecticut is using 1,177
kWh of electricity per month, and 14,124 kWh over the course of the year.”
Inflation was rampant during the late Roman Empire, just
before the Goths paid a visit. As far as memory stretches back, inflation has
been defined as “too may dollars chasing too few goods,” a definition that has
not yet penetrated the concrete skulls of tax and spend Democrats.
Ned Lamont has been
letting the recession cat out of the bag since last July and, in a debate with
Republican gubernatorial challenger Bob Stefanowski, who had the temerity to
question Lamont’s obscene $5.6 billion surplus at a time when
nearly all Connecticut citizens are tightening their belts, Lamont, throwing
all caution to the wind, said he would be reluctant to return a significant
portion of Connecticut’s surplus to hard pressed taxpayers because, “Maybe
we're going to have a surplus at the end of this fiscal year, maybe we're not,
but don't spend the surplus we don't have. That's the type of thing that got
this state into such a mess over the last 30, 40 years.” Not pausing to explain
how one may spend a surplus one doesn’t have, Lamont remarked after the debate,
“I did a debate the other day and my opponent [Stefanowski] spent
that surplus, you know, five times over. We're heading into what could be a REAL RECESSION [emphasis mine]."
At this point, such a robust denial of Biden’s robust
denials – there is no inflation and no recession – should have caused the solid
earth in Connecticut to open and swallow Democrats who feverishly cling to
every word that falls from the President’s mouth as if they were papal
infallibility pronouncements.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, formerly called Taxachussetts,
outgoing Republican Governor Charlie Baker “filed a fiscal year 2022 closeout
budget that sets aside $2.94 billion to be returned to taxpayers and
leaves the Legislature about $1.5 billion in surplus dollars to spend,”
according to NBC Boston.
Massachusetts passed a statute, 62F, way back in 1986 that tied
tax growth to wage growth.
"We are in phenomenal shape," said Administration
and Finance Secretary Michael Heffernan. "On 62F, back in 1986, they
passed a piece of legislation that if tax collections grew faster than the
three-year average of wage growth, you're collecting too much in taxes and you
should return it to the taxpayers, and that's exactly what we're going to
do."
A similar statute in Connecticut would serve as a retaining
wall preventing a spendthrift legislature from collecting unnecessary taxes to
spend on unnecessary programs. In addition to enforcing thrift in government,
it also would prevent slick politicians from “fooling all the people all the
time,” easy to do in a state in which, for the last half century, there has
been no enemy to the left.
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