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A weight on Democrats?

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A weight on Democrats?

Yesterday, Sept. 7, we published an editorial about Connecticut’s upcoming legislative elections. We noted Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, has sneered at buzz that Republicans may reclaim at least one legislative chamber. We argued that Sen. Duff’s commentary may indicate the senator and others in the Democratic leadership privately worry about their party’s chances. In June, a poll from Quinnipiac University gave the legislature – which Democrats have dominated since 1987 – a pitiful 24 percent approval rating.

Obviously, it is too early to know how things will turn out, but the Democrats should be concerned. Connecticut’s budget arguably is the most important issue facing the state. It is not in good shape, and the Democrats’ fingerprints are all over it.

Early in the summer of 2015, Democratic legislators and Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy approved a budget package for the 2015-17 biennium. It should have been obvious that this budget was a mess waiting to happen. In the face of projections – from Gov. Malloy’s Office of Policy and Management and the legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis – of a $2 billion two-year deficit, the Democrats opted for a budget that was heavy on taxes, spending, gimmickry, and overreliance on unreliable revenues. Democratic leaders, however, portrayed their handiwork as just what the doctor ordered. Sen. Duff claimed it was good for Connecticut’s business climate.

Minority Republican lawmakers, who offered an alternative plan, were kept out of negotiations. No one from the GOP voted yes on the budget package that became law.

Predictably, the 2015-16 side of the budget was falling apart by mid-September 2015, less than three months after the fiscal year started. Revisions did not help, and Gov. Malloy and state Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo have estimated fiscal year 2015-16 closed June 30 with Connecticut $279.4 million in the red. This hole probably will be filled via a transfer from the state’s troubled rainy day fund. The budget reserve was tapped after FY 2014-15 finished $113.2 million in deficit.

As we asserted in our Aug. 28 editorial, “a subpar revenue flow in one fiscal year may adversely influence the trajectory of the next year.” To that end, Mr. Lembo recently issued disturbing warnings on the prospects of the revised 2016-17 budget approved in May by Gov. Malloy, Sen. Duff and company. This budget is structurally flawed, yet the governor said it “is no doubt a critical start of the conversation heading in the right direction,” while Sen. Duff portrayed it as business-friendly. Like its predecessor, the 2016-17 budget was approved after Republican leaders were excluded from negotiations, and no GOP legislators voted for it. Republicans offered not one, but two, budgets of their own.

One need not be an economist to know a “permanent fiscal crisis” – to use the famous phrase of Malloy administration Budget Director Benjamin Barnes – stands to have catastrophic economic consequences. The Democrats who control Connecticut’s Capitol consistently have demonstrated they don’t have a clue what they are doing and they can’t pass the buck – not to Republican legislators and not to GOP former Govs. John G. Rowland and M. Jodi Rell. With Connecticut’s economy already struggling mightily, it is wholly conceivable there will be some electoral blowback, and that may account for Sen. Duff’s aforementioned pettiness.

Definitely stay tuned; things will not be boring.


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