Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Most of us are living in the land of Déjà Vu All Over Again.  Every fiscal year, we keep crashing into the same icebergs. Ben Barnes, who heads Governor Dannel Malloy’s Office of Policy Management, has said the state may be facing chronic deficits. The last time Mr. Malloy faced a deficit, he disposed of it through tax increases. But the largest tax increase in Connecticut history failed to solve the problem because Connecticut does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. Mr. Malloy said during his campaign that further tax increases were off the table, at which happy news overtaxed citizens and businesses, their eyes fixed on the exit signs, breathed a sigh of relief. Then he began to tug the veil from his second administration. There is not a hint of spending reduction in any post-election remarks made by Mr. Malloy thus far. But there is plenty of chatter about spending: Education must be reformed; vanishing businesses in Connecticut depend upon an ...