House Speaker Chris Donovan
Scarin' You Straight!
Photo by Steve Kotchko
Posted 2/23/09
In 1972, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway went to number five on the Billboard Magazine “Hot 100” with their soulful hit “Where Is The Love?” In the State Capitol press room, reporters intone: “Where’s the love?” whenever the pols they cover attack each other in fine partisan fashion. Despite all the early season spin about bipartisan cooperation because of the deep economic crisis, it sure hasn’t materialized at the Capitol.
Democrats continued their pitch that Republican Gov. Jodi Rell fashioned her state budget plan using outdated deficit figures, so she could make the thing balance with “no new taxes.” The Dems claim the deficit is closer to $8 billion not $6 billion in the Rell proposal.
So Democratic legislative leaders announced they’re asking the budget-writing Appropriations Committee chairs to come up with a list of proposed spending cuts to erase a deficit of $8 billion. Presumably that would be a draconian list to prove you can’t cut your way out of a deficit.
“People need to be scared straight on this budget,” said House Speaker Chris Donovan (D-Meriden). Does that mean Democrats are ready to make nightmarish program cuts? Of course not, the leaders said. Their list would simply illustrate the foolishness of relying on spending reductions to erase the big deficit.
Essentially, Democrats allege that Rell lied when she produced a supposedly balanced budget in early February. They claim she downplayed the deficit so she could trumpet a “no new taxes” theme, leaving it to the Democrat-controlled legislature to be the “bad guys” by proposing tax hikes later.
If Democrats were being nasty, the Rell administration wasn’t about to take it in the chops. They rolled out deputy budget czar Michael Cicchetti to reject the idea Rell fudged the numbers. “The (governor’s) budget is not a fraud; it’s a balanced budget,” he declared. Cicchetti blasted the Dems tactic of working up a scary list of potential program cuts. “They’re going to waste everyone’s time, go through an exercise that will never be acted upon—so what’s the point?”
Rell took a few shots of her own in the budget battle. She issued a new $1.1 billion deficit mitigation plan for the current fiscal year, and urged the legislature to approve it this week, though she doubts it will pass intact.
“We are drowning in a sea of red ink and so far the majority party in the Legislature has done nothing but tread water,” Rell charged. “They need to adopt my plan in its entirety and stop picking and choosing the relatively easy options while putting off the inevitable,” she said.
In a weekend TV talk show, representatives of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities expressed real concern about the wrangling between Rell and the Democrats. Now more than ever, cities and towns need to know how much state aid and how much federal “stimulus” money they can count on to finalize their own budgets this year. If the worst economic crisis in decades isn’t enough to stave off the annual bickering over a state budget, what is?
It should be mentioned that fiscal gurus from the governor’s budget office, the legislature’s budget office, and the State Comptroller’s office met last week in a supposed effort to reach consensus on the size of the state deficit for the next two-year budget cycle. A Rell spokesman claimed it was a good meeting, and all sides collected the paperwork offered by the others, and retreated to their own offices to analyze it.
Capitol wags figure the meeting was more like the “conference on the mound” that occurs when the starting pitcher gets shelled by the opposition. The hurler, the manager, the catcher, and an infielder or two make polite small talk and scratch about in the dirt with their cleats while the relief pitcher trots in from the bullpen.
Just as the budget gurus did, the ball players soon return to their spots. Did it all go well? If the TV crew is doing its job, fans at home get a view of how it really went down. The starter heads into the dugout, slams his glove against the wall, and kicks over the water cooler.
Right now, that’s how things are going at the State Capitol. The governor is sticking to her “no new taxes” mantra, though the worsening deficit seems to make that promise look like something out of a Disney movie. The Democrats are shellshocked by public hearings featuring all their usual constituency groups shouting: “Don’t cut our budget!”
The reality is the deficit challenge is so large virtually every tactic including tax hikes, spending cuts, state worker concessions, borrowing, federal economic aid, draining the state’s “rainy day fund” and every other fiscal gimmick, gambit, and economic concoction will be needed to remedy the situation.