Today the online absentee ballot request portal opens. The fall campaign is officially here; with a choice about: How Hartford spends surplus, what “affordability” actually costs, and whether the Fourth District keeps sending to Congress a man who would not denounce the horrors of socialism.

Democrat’s Slush Fund

In 2017, Connecticut put fiscal guardrails in place to stop Hartford from treating surplus dollars as a political piggy bank. Those bipartisan rules were supposed to send extra revenue to the Budget Reserve Fund and to pay down pension debt. Instead, the Democrat Supermajority opened a new discretionary account for the governor to tap at will.

Democrats transferred $330.8 million from the Budget Reserve Fund into a new “Federal Cuts Response Fund,” then added another $50 million, bringing the pot to about $381 million. That is the definition of a slush fund: surplus pulled off-budget, spent outside the guardrails, and justified as an “emergency” where no actual emergency exists. Senator Ryan Fazio and Representative Tina Courpas kept their campaign promises and opposed blowing the caps. Greenwich’s Democratic representatives voted with the majority that made it possible.

Affordability and the Unintended Consequences of Government Action

Housing, electricity, insurance, food and many other necessities have become increasingly expensive for Connecticut families. Some government-related costs are easy to see. Electric bills, as Ryan Fazio has identified, include a Public Benefits category used to recover costs from state-mandated energy and public-policy programs. Whether those programs are worthwhile is a fair debate. Their costs — and how they are financed — should be transparent to the people who pay them.

Other policies intended to help consumers can work in the opposite direction. Rent control, price ceilings, and higher minimum wages all have second-order effects on supply and jobs. The useful test for every proposal offered in the name of affordability is simple: What happens next? Will it actually make Connecticut more affordable five years from now — not merely appear to do so today?

Sandinista Jim Himes

In 1988 Harvard senior Jim Himes packed a notebook and flew to revolutionary Nicaragua. He returned with his honors thesis on the Sandinista Defense Committees. Thirty-five years later Congressman Jim Himes voted NO when the House was asked to denounce the horrors of socialism.

H. Con. Res. 9 passed 328–86. Every Republican who voted, voted yes. A majority of voting Democrats joined them. Himes voted Nay. He declined to state that the system which produced Ortega, Castro, and Maduro is a horror. Dr. Michael Goldstein is running against him — a Republican who understands where that system leads, and why the Constitution is worth defending.

Mark Your Calendar

Greenwich is worth fighting for.

Support our candidates. Get the message out. Get the vote out.