Bob’s platform is ridiculous but still better than Ned’s

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s platform of eliminating the state income tax is ridiculous, since the tax produces half state government’s revenue and Stefanowski refuses to specify spending cuts. But Stefanowski’s platform is still far superior to that of the Democratic candidate, Ned Lamont.

For Lamont’s platform is only to muddle on like the Democratic administration of the last eight years, always raising taxes to maintain the status quo and never questioning the mistaken premises of failing policy. That’s why the state and municipal employee unions support Lamont so enthusiastically and make him the anti-change candidate.

Not that Stefanowski can be trusted. He had no record in Connecticut’s public life before becoming a candidate last year and hadn’t even voted for 16 years. Even the most informed and involved people have no idea of his character. Stefanowski’s vagueness shows he has not mastered the basics of the state budget he pledges to cut and does not fully understand the missions of the state agencies.

But unless Lamont can become more specifically critical about state government than Stefanowski is, the Republican’s election at least will signify that people want state and municipal government to become less expensive and stop the tax increases of the last eight years.

That’s why the ridicule of Stefanowski’s platform seems to be having little impact on his support and why he generally is considered to have performed much better than Lamont in their two debates so far.

People can concede that state government is never going to forgo half its revenue, not even over eight years, as Stefanowski claims he can accomplish. But people still can figure that just freezing spending and taxes would be a supreme accomplishment and that the Republican’s platform will push him to do at least that much, while Lamont, so tied to the unions and the other special interests that control the Democratic Party, could never get that serious with spending and taxes.

The restraint required by Stefanowski’s platform will raise policy questions Connecticut long has refused to face. Among them:

Why has education policy, increasing spending for decades, never improved student learning or closed the “achievement gap” between students from middle-class and impoverished homes?

Why has poverty policy — expensively subsidizing the most anti-social behavior, child neglect — only increased poverty rather than produced self-sufficiency?

Why has urban policy — spending so much in the name of reviving cities — produced only more deterioration?

Why has economic development policy not reversed Connecticut’s long decline relative to other states?

How do collective bargaining for government employees and binding arbitration for their union contracts benefit the public rather than just impair democratic control of state and local government?

Indeed, these questions are far more compelling than any that have been put to the candidates at their debates so far, since they involve the failure of billions of dollars of spending every year to achieve their supposed objectives.

By contrast, state government’s getting into the businesses of sports betting and marijuana, about which the candidates have been asked, might raise only tens of millions of dollars annually.