CT Blue

This postat Hullabaloo caught me eye. In it, Digby states the obvious about Republican tax cuts:

It’s a simple scheme, really. Whenever they control the government they immediately pass massive tax cuts and massive increases in military spending, always promising that the wealthy and the corporations will pour all that money back into the economy and it will end up increasing revenues because of all the growth it will stimulate. But it never does.

It’s actually quite brilliant because the real goal isn’t just to give tax cuts to the rich and spend huge sums of money on the military. It’s also to run up the debt so Republicans can turn around and wring their hands over the need to be “fiscally responsible” and force the government to cut spending on programs they don’t like. They are specifically hostile to what they call “entitlements”: the big-ticket items of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It should be a simple matter to come up with a simple, coherent message to expose this con game, particularly because, as Digby points out, they’ve done it again and again with the same results each time. Yet, the Democrats can’t seem to be able to do it. Nor can they come up with a counterattack when the Republicans blame them for failing to deal with the deficits that Republicans created.

This kind of con game goes on at every political level. Last night I attended a debate between our incumbent Republican Senator, Heather Somers, and our candidate, Bob Statchen. Heather has no problem advocating for reduced taxes on the rich (her first move as a state senator was a proposal to repeal the Connecticut estate tax and the business tax), which she takes as a given that we can afford, but immediately whines about our inability to pay for anything, such as paid family medical leave, that benefits normal people. The latter just couldn’t be done, she assured her listeners. To his credit, Bob insisted we could do it, as have so many other states. Of course, Heather insists that increased revenue is off the table. We can’t have tolls, she insists, while she lies about various aspects of that revenue source. And of course, we can’t raise the minimum wage, because it would destroy the state if we stopped exporting the money Walmart is saving by paying slave wages to Arkansas and the pockets of the Waltons. 

But I rant.

This particular race is extremely important, by the way. Heather is vulnerable, and Bob is a good candidate. If the Senate remains tied, or goes Republican, and Lamont wins, the Senate Republicans will do to him what the US Senate Republicans did to Obama.