Connecticut Republicans say President Joe Biden’s sweeping plans would spend too much, too quickly

Hartford Courant (CT)

As Democrats coalesce around President Joe Biden’s sweeping plans for infrastructure, affordable child care, free community college, expanded health care subsidies and more, Republicans in Connecticut and elsewhere say they think the president is spending too much, too quickly.

“From a Republican perspective, we all have a growing concern about the amount of spending that government is proposing to do,” Rep. Vincent Candelora, Connecticut’s House Republican leader, said Thursday. “Those type of policies have me worried that, in the long run, while we’re fighting this pandemic we’re creating a much bigger problem for our economy and its recovery coming out of the pandemic.”

In a speech Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress, Biden laid out the case for ambitious government projects, funded in part by increased taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals. He proposed raising the top marginal tax rate to where it stood before President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut and to “get rid of the loopholes that allow Americans to make more than $1 million a year and pay a lower tax rate on their capital gains than Americans who receive a paycheck.”

“I believe what I propose is fair, fiscally responsible, and it raises revenue to pay for the plans I propose and will create millions of jobs that will grow the economy and enhance our financial standing in the country,” Biden said.

Candelora said Biden’s speech was “fine” and that he supports the president’s interest in improving infrastructure but that he believes Democrats locally and nationally are overspending.

“Just like what we’re seeing in Connecticut, the Democrats are spending well outside of our means and aren’t recognizing the impact on our economy,” he said. “When we have this mentality of ‘just let’s print money’ it’s going to get our country into a bad place.”

Biden’s ambitious agenda is further evidence of his transition from a moderate to a progressive, said Alex Plitsas, the chairman of the Fairfield Republican Town Committee.

“There are a lot of social welfare programs,” in Biden’s proposal that constitute “a redistribution of wealth from the wealthy to the lower middle class and those living in poverty,” Plitsas said.

The long terms cost of Biden’s plan has many Republicans worried. Plitsas said he fears it will lead to stagflation, slower economic growth and higher unemployment.

Biden’s embrace of policies championed by Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders runs counter to the approach he’s followed throughout most of his long career in politics, said Themis Klarides, the former Republican leader in the Connecticut House of Representatives.

“President Biden ran on a promise of bipartisanship. Instead, he has pandered to the radical left and proposed $6 trillion in new spending that will bankrupt future generations,” Klarides said.

She contrasted the president’s speech with the Republican response, delivered by Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. Scott, she said, provided “a clear, practical and optimistic vision for how to get our nation back on track.”

Tim Herbst, an attorney and former Trumbull first selectman who ran for governor as a Republican in 2018, said Biden was “trying to keep the far left of his party appeased.”

“He’s got to be very careful that we don’t go on this massive spending spree without reining in the cost of government,” Herbst said.

Herbst said he agrees with the need for revamped infrastructure and challenged Connecticut’s congressional delegation to deliver a windfall for the state.

“If the president is committed to spending this kind of money on infrastructure, given the fact we have an all-Democrat legislative delegation,” he said, “their ability or inability to secure massive federal dollars to improve Connecticut’s infrastructure rests exclusively on their shoulders.”

Sue Hatfield, chair of Connecticut’s Republican Party, said in a text that Biden had “abandon[ed] any last pretense of governing from the middle.”

Instead, she said, he committed to “shoveling almost $6 trillion in cradle-to-grave spending to nearly every man, woman and child regardless of need.”

Kevin Kelly, Connecticut’s Senate Republican Leader, said he appreciated Biden’s focus on the middle and working classes and accused Connecticut Democrats of failing to match that message.

“That was the message I heard last night: where Democrats in Connecticut depart from their own president,” Kelly said, citing proposed tax increases on the wealthy, as well as a climate-related measure that could marginally increase gas prices beginning in 2023. “He’s identifying what I think middle-class Connecticut is experiencing and walking through, and yet we don’t have the Connecticut Democrats paying the necessary attention.”

Nationally, Republicans have accused Biden of departing from campaign talk of bipartisan governance, in favor of a more assertive style. The president’s largest initiative to date, the American Rescue Plan, which delivered stimulus payment, tax credits, municipal aid and more, passed without a single Republican vote in either the House or Senate.

“President Biden promised you a specific kind of leadership. He promised to unite a nation, to lower the temperature, to govern for all Americans, no matter how we voted,” Scott said in his televised response to Biden’s speech. “But three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further apart.”

Alex Putterman can be reached at aputterman@courant.com.