Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Haskell and Hillary Keith Phaneuf, a reporter for CTMirror, set afire the imposture without doing too much damage to the tender feelings of Connecticut’s ruling class. In “ Lamont eyes emergency budget cuts, even as reserves swell ,” Phaneuf notes 1) that the reductions are minor rescissionary cuts, and 2) that the deficit Governor Ned Lamont seeks to reduce through his rescission authority represents a piddling “0.1 percent of the General Fund.” Phaneuf notes, “Ned Lamont has also recently raised the specter of emergency budget cuts — something his predecessor did frequently to the consternation of the General Assembly.”

A piece by Keith Phaneuf in CTMirror, “ Who pays the next CT tax hike? Democrats must answer question soon ” presents half of the right question.   Listening to Democrats in the General Assembly in this the winter of our discontent leaves the impression that one has heard half a conversation. The debate in the General Assembly and, unfortunately, in the media, ALL OF IT, is about discharging deficits through tax increases. But a deficit, like a coin, has two sides. And a “comprehensive solution” to our problems that shows only one face is no solution. If the level of spending in Connecticut continues to increase at a rapid rate – and that will assuredly happen if Connecticut continues to pursue a course all too familiar ever since former Governor Lowell Weicker forced his income tax down the throat of a somewhat resistant legislature in 1991 – and if the underside of the getting and spending coin continues to remain face-down on Connecticut’s table, then tax increases are i...

If it were possible for Governor Dannel Malloy to transfer Connecticut’s debt backward to previous administrations, he would do so a New York minute. This being impossible, he has shifted blame for the state’s current indebtedness to preceding governors, absolving from adverse criticism, for some odd reason, former Governor Lowell Weicker, whom he rarely mentions as being a governor who had run up future debt by increasing taxes and spending. Perhaps that is because Malloy himself has adopted Weicker’s strategy in attacking debt – raise taxes. Twice since he had been elected the first Democratic governor in twenty six years, Malloy has raised taxes, imposing on the state both the largest and the second largest tax increases in state history. The last Connecticut pre-income tax budget was about $7.5 billion; the current Malloy budget is nearly three times as large, every single penny of it having been appropriate from Connecticut’s real working party, middle class people mostly...

Thermidore was the eleventh month in the French revolutionary calendar, derived from the Greek word “thermos,” which means hot. And it was hot indeed, particularly for the French monarchy. Heads rolled after a particularly severe bread shortage in Paris, which was caused by a monarchy inattentive to an overtaxed middle class about whom Marie Antoinette reportedly said “Let’em eat cake.” Poor Marie likely did not say it, but this did not prevent the French revolutionists from cranking out convincing propaganda or, as we are now pleased to call it “fake news.” Connecticut may be approaching Thermidore, that point at which the patience of a majority of the people finally snaps. CTMirror pretty much comes right out and says it in a readable series written by Keith Phaneuf, “ AS CUTS GET UGLY, LEGISLATORS FORFEIT POWER, TRANSPARENCY .”  

According to Jonathan Pelto ,  who ran out of money in his short-lived gubernatorial bid before he could seriously challenge Governor Dannel Malloy, Governor Dannel Malloy’s promise of a tax reduction was “a hoax.” It’s difficult to disagree with him. Three days prior to Mr. Malloy’s budget address before the General Assembly, the governor appeared on WFSB’s  "Face the State” and told moderator Dennis House he would be cutting the sales tax rate from 6.35 percent to 6.20 percent on Nov. 1, and to 5.95 percent more than two years from now, in April of 2017. The governor who had imposed on Connecticut the largest tax increase in its history had become, in the twinkling of an eye, a tax cutter, a miraculous transformation.

The guys and gals who work at the Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA) are the “go to” people for legislators who do not carry an Encyclopedia Britannica around in their heads. Throw some number on the floor before them and they can tell you if the numbers are accurate or fictional. Even on a bad day, they can tell you how many angels fit on the head of a pin. And in our statistical age, when every “non-partisan” agency is connected at the hip to fiercely partisan politicians, the OFA is genuinely non-partisan -- in the way that math or water is non-partisan. Having examined the estimated savings in the Governor Dannel Malloy-SEBAC budget, the OFA has found that 60% of the savings claims made therein are UNVERIFIABLE. The bad news was brought to the attention of the general public by Keith Phaneuf of CTMirror : “Nonpartisan legislative analysts say they can vouch for less than 40 percent of the $1.6 billion in labor savings figured into the next biennial budget, and are unable to asse...