In many ways, Gov. Malloy’s plans to defeat Connecticut deficit with increased taxes and lowered spending mirrors strategies that Republicans are trying to block on a federal level.
Malloy’s advice to his party rivals on Capitol Hill?
“Grow up, quite frankly,” said Malloy on Wednesday’s edition of CNBC’s Squawk Box.
The governor was on the morning talk show to discuss his plans for job creation. Frequently criticizing state republicans for passing a large deficit to him, Malloy had no kinder words for his party opponents when the conversation turned national.
“This whole thing about the debt position is a bunch of people not wanting to take responsibility for decisions that they made or their party made in the past,” said Malloy.
His full comments can be found below, with the section regarding national policy at the 5:40 mark.
Malloy defended his economic plan of increasing taxes, cutting spending and creating incentive packets; he pointed to Cigna’s plans to move their HQ to Bloomfield as proof of an expanding job market.
Publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes was also on the program, and criticized Malloy for focusing on large businesses rather than small businesses. Forbes argued that raising Connecticut tax rates would only make states more attractive.
Malloy rebutted the criticism saying that tax rates were still lower than New Jersey or New York; states he said were unable to meet their pension obligations as Connecticut could.
The only moment the governor seemed to falter was when he was asked about a carried interest tax. At first dismissing that such a tax would not happen, Malloy demurred when pressed on his personal stance.
Carried interest is the share of profits gained by the manager of a private equity or hedge fund. Usually considered a capitol gains tax, there has been talk of considering it as direct income, which may as much as double taxes to those managers.
This would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. Malloy and his fellow Democrat’s have been in charge of the statehouse for 50 years and have put CT in the position of being dead-last in the creation of jobs. We also have the highest per-capita debt of any state in the union and it’s going to go even higher with his proposed spending – e.g., the $600M “bus line to nowhere” (New Britain to Hartford) and a $900M expansion of the UCONN Health Center that is already a money-losing hospital and will only get worse under his proposed expansion. In the case of the former, it would be cheaper to buy the supposed riders of the line a new car and 5 years of free gas. In the case of the latter, he claims the $900M (over a billion $ by the expected overruns are factored in…) will create 15k jobs by the year 2036. 2036!! Does anyone believe this nonsense? Will anyone remember this Democrat lie in 25 years when the hospital will have been closed due to Obamacare and the state’s remaining population is much less than it is today?
Both projects are nothing more than sops to the unions that run the state, controlling the Dem’s like so many string puppets.
CT is a Democrat controlled state and has been like that for years. It is not surprising that the Democrats would continue policies that have made them rank 47 on the CNBC ranking for business friendly. His policies have made this state a bad place to live and work. His deal with Cigna brings 200 jobs to the state while smaller businesses are continuing to leave and even UBS is moving people back to NY. CT has no advantage as it used to have over NY and NJ. It is just another high tax Democrat controlled state. Malloy’s actions are typical of tax and spend Dems.