Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Democrats in Connecticut are more efficient than Republicans in utilizing human resources. During the last non-presidential election, national Republicans on the right appeared to have caught up with the left. It was owing in large part to the most animated wing of the Republican Party – patriot tea party people, but libertarians and conservatives as well -– that Republicans were able to bring into the U.S. Congress and state houses across the nation a rich harvest. In Connecticut, the harvest was meager -- and bitter. Republicans sent two new senators and 15 House members to the General Assembly, but they lost the governorship by the thinnest of margins, in part because of a stubborn resistance among status quo Republicans to the party’s most active element. Perhaps members of the town committees and the Republican Party Central Committee thought they could harness the storm they saw brewing elsewhere in the nation without also making room in the breast of the party for the lightn...

The report card the state has received from The Connecticut Society of Certified Public Accountants is alarming. Connecticut ranks 50th in personal debt, 48th in debt measured a share of personal income, 49th in pension funding, and 49th in the amount of working capital it has in hand. Marcia Marien, president of the Connecticut Society of Certified Public Accountants , put it this way when she was invited to give a presentation at the state Capitol: “We’re not going broke. We’re broke right now.” Over the last five years, state revenues have increased 5 percent, while state spending has increased 28 percent. And although stimulus funds provided by the federal government have helped some states to get by, federal funds – tax money withdrawn from the private marketplace and distributed to states and favored industries in the form of grants or credits – are not likely to continue because, according to Ms. Marien, “The federal government doesn’t have the resources, either.” If the fe...