Comedian Rob Corddry famously riffed, “facts have a well-known liberal bias.” Like many punchlines, this one states a real truth.
Hostility toward facts has been entrenched in the national Republican economic and fiscal narrative for decades. In recent years, it has also become the foundation of the Connecticut Republican narrative.
The false narrative posits: (1) Republicans reduce deficits and spending; (2) Democrats spend and amass debt; and (3) Republican policies boost economies, jobs and the middle class. The narrative is wrong for every administration and Congress of the last sixty years. In truth, Democrats reduce deficits and boost economies, jobs and the middle class, while Republicans demagogue deficits while out of power, then run massive deficits and diminish the middle class, resulting in slower growth. The history:
- Campaigning on reducing spending and deficits, Republicans Reagan/Bush presided over the largest debt-financed spending and regressive tax cuts to that time, accelerating middle class losses, and bequeathing a financial crisis and painful recession.
- Inheriting recession and massive deficits, Democrats Clinton/Gore instituted progressive tax changes that resulted in record budget surpluses, reducing the national debt, and stimulating a broad, record-long recovery and middle class gains.
- Inheriting stability, Republicans Bush/Cheney implemented debt-financed regressive tax cuts and spending increases that exceeded Reagan/Bush. Abetted by Republican-majority Congresses, Bush/Cheney profligacy wiped out the Clinton/Gore surpluses, resulting in record deficits. Bush/Cheney policies stimulated a massive, years-long real estate bubble they allowed to metastasize into the Great Recession.
- Inheriting record deficits and the greatest global crisis in 80 years, Democrats Obama/Biden implemented a stimulus that, in combination with progressive tax changes, created the longest, most sustained economic and jobs recovery in US history, low inflation, AND reduced Bush/Cheney deficits by two-thirds.
- Inheriting the record Obama recovery and falling deficits, Trump/Pence and the Republican-majority Congress have implemented massive debt-financed regressive tax cuts, hiked middle class taxes (especially for Connecticut), once again generating massive deficits and stimulating dangerous inflationary pressures for the first time in a decade.
Republicans have been running the same counter-fact playbook in Connecticut, inventing a pervasive narrative denigrating Democratic Governor Dan Malloy. Though constantly repeated, Republicans’ Connecticut narrative is just as false as their national narrative.
Governor Malloy took office in 2011, amidst fallout of the Bush/Cheney Great Recession, inheriting a $3.2 billion budget deficit from his 16-year Republican predecessors. Malloy and Assembly Democrats subsequently REDUCED the deficit by 88% to $382 million, built a multi-billion-dollar reserve as fiscal cushion, PAID OFF the massive bonding bills accumulated by the immediately preceding Republican governors, and began funding state pension liabilities previously unaddressed for decades. Connecticut has problems, but on the most relevant measures is in far better shape than when Republicans last occupied the governor’s office.
The Republican prescription for Connecticut is the same ruinous program they’ve repeatedly run to disastrous effect in the federal government, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and every other bottom-performing state they dominate. Don’t believe false narratives; say “no” to Republican irresponsibility.
Alex Harris is Chair of the Ridgefield Democratic Town Committee, which provides this column.