The last Republican U.S. Representative in Connecticut’s gerrymandered 1st District was Edwin May in 1959. The seat has been held uninterruptedly by Democrats for 66 years. Geographically, the district resembles a lucky horseshoe.
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| Larson's 1st District |
Along with other districts in Connecticut commandeered by
Democrats for multiple decades, U.S. Representative John Larson’s district is a
more or less permanent Democrat fiefdom. Larson has occupied the district unmolested
for the last 24 years. He is one of a handful of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressmen
for life. Both Larson and Rosa DeLauro of the 3rd District,
dominated by New Haven and environs, are immovable presences for as long as
they wish to hold their offices.
The Democrat Party in Connecticut has wielded enormous power
in the state for the last three decades; so much so that the aggressive power
of legacy Democrats allied with neo-progressives has remained undiminished by
state Republicans in the General Assembly who otherwise might give voice to an
alternative vision but lack sufficient numbers in the General Assembly to move
enabling legislation forward.
Numbers in the state legislature matter, and Democrats now
enjoy a nearly veto-proof majority in the General Assembly. They have held the
governor’s office for 24 years. All the state’s constitutional officers are
Democrats. Connecticut’s somewhat shrunken legacy media is kindly and often
uncritically disposed to the party in power for both ideological and business
reasons. And state Democrats have become used to dancing joyously on the chest
of their enemies. In Genghis Khan’s immortal words: “A man's greatest work is
to break his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all the
things that have been theirs, to hear the weeping of those who cherished them,
to take their horses between his knees and to press in his arms the most
desirable of their women.”
Hegemonies work until they no longer work.
Consider the current positions of Democrats and Republicans
on the state’s so called budget spending guardrails. The state guardrail
spending cap was initiated at the same time as then Governor Lowell Weicker’s
income tax as a surety that big-spending Democrats would not deploy the new
income tax to spend the state into penury.
The spending cap was initiated to convince doubtful
legislators to pass the Weicker income tax measure. It worked but – big “but”
-- the constitutional amendment at the same time required the General Assembly
to define three primary terms used in the spending cap legislation: “increase
in personal income,” “increase in inflation,” and “general budget
expenditures.”
We are told in a 2023 policy briefing written by the School + State Finance Project: “The
constitutional spending cap bars the legislature from increasing general budget
expenditures in an amount that exceeds the increase in personal income revenue
or inflation, whichever is greater, unless
the governor declares a state of emergency [emphasis mine] and three-fifths
of each house of the General Assembly approves the additional expenditure. However,
between FYs 1993 and 2007, those terms remained undefined, resulting in budgets
having different interpretations of the spending.”
This suspension of legislative definitions --
lasting 24 years -- facilitated uncontrolled state spending. In
addition, no payments were made by the state to reduce Connecticut’s mounting
state employee pensions and salary debts for decades.
“In 2020,” Marc Fitch of the Yankee Institute tells us,
“Connecticut’s two major pension funds for state employees and teachers had
total unfunded pension liabilities of $41.7 billion, including $18 billion in
teacher pension debt.” And, Fitch added, “Pensions are not the only retirement
debt the state has, however. Retiree healthcare, known as Other Post-Employment
Benefits, has also increased over the years. The latest valuation, based on
2020 measurements, saw the OPEB liability increase by $2.8 billion to $23.5
billion, largely due to lowered return assumptions and rising healthcare
costs.”
For decades, the state of Connecticut settled its debt by
ignoring its debt -- until this politically useful ignorance on the part of
majority Democrat’s no longer worked. Major rating agencies lowered the state
rating, which forced the state to borrow money at higher interest rates. And
that is when progressive Democrats and legacy Democrats in the General Assembly,
plus Governor Ned Lamont, conspired with minority Republicans to establish spending
barriers and caps. But cagy neo-progressive Democrats in the legislature know
-- where there is a will, there is a way to frustrate spending caps. And “will”
in politics is always a matter of numbers.
Neo-progressive leaders in the General Assembly have now
turned their attention to the spending barriers. Abridging the barriers will be
the work of a few hours by legislative “leaders” such as arch progressive
Democrat State President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, whose seat in New Haven is
anchored in one of the safest Democrat dominated districts in Connecticut.
Democrat Speaker of the State House of Representatives Matt
Ritter, according to Connecticut NBC, said recently during a press conference,
“lawmakers should declare a fiscal
emergency [emphasis mine] in order to change the guardrails to cover
expenses from potential cuts by Trump’s administration. The measure needs a
three-fifths vote in both chambers, meaning 91 votes in the state House of
Representatives and 22 in the Senate.” Ritter “wants Gov. Ned Lamont to declare
a fiscal emergency, a move that would allow the state to get around fiscal
guardrails.”
So far, Democrat Governor Ned Lamont appears to be standing
firm against such attempts to subvert the purpose of spending cuts but, given the drift of the Democrat Party to the
left over the last few decades, Lamont may be a thin reed. Neo-progressive
Democrats looking lustfully at the state’s surplus no doubt are asking
themselves, as always – what is the point of having absolute power if you are
not prepared to abuse it.
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