Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Connecticut’s income tax – read: license to spend – is now 25 years old , and celebrations are in order.   Just kidding. No one at this point feels inclined to celebrate a destructive measure that has made the state indistinguishable from other spendthrift, high tax states. Views on the income tax have changed only slightly since it was pumped through the General Assembly by then Governor Lowell Weicker – a gasbag, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell called him -- and his accomplices both in the legislature and in Connecticut’s media. Mr. Weicker vetoed three non-income tax budgets before the deed had been accomplished. One of the most prominent signs carried by income tax protesters following the long night of the knives was this one -- “CUT THE FAT.”

The Hartford Courant has only recently discovered the vital connection between taxes and spending: The more you tax, the more you can spend. For many years, stretching back to the administration of maverick Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, the paper argued in countless editorials and op-ed pieces that Connecticut did not have a spending problem; it had a revenue problem. Translation: The state needn't worry about the level of taxation or spending or regulation, a hidden tax on the cost of business in the state, for as long as Connecticut was viable enough to continue to increase taxes. Any bumper stickers from the failed anti-income tax years reading “I survived the Weicker income tax” are, this year, 23 years old. In two years, Connecticut will be celebrating the 25 th anniversary of the Weicker income tax – which, during its day, was thought to have solved Connecticut’s revenue and tax problems.