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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.
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.
Penetrating article Don. Not that it matters much, but we've had a Democrat governor for "only" 14 years.