WSJ Blasts Failed Dem Gov Dan Malloy Over Aetna’s Plan to Leave Connecticut

WASHINGTON, June 5 -- The Republican Governors Association issued the following news release:

With last week's news that Aetna is planning on joining General Electric in becoming the latest major company to move its headquarters out of Connecticut in response to Failed Governor Dan Malloy's job killing policies and tax hikes, the Democrat governor continues to receive withering criticism from the press. This weekend the Wall Street Journal published yet another scathing editorial blasting Malloy as a "slow learner" who "has spent two terms treating business as a bottomless well of cash to redistribute to public unions." Now with the Connecticut's budget issues drawing comparisons to Puerto Rico's recent fiscal mess, the state's dire fiscal situation and "destructive business climate" will undoubtedly prove a burden to Malloy's Democrat allies who choose to run governor in 2018.

"The Aetna insurance company has been based in Hartford, Conn., since 1853, but this week it said it is looking to move to another state. Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to match other states' financial incentives, but taxpayer money can't buy fiscal certainty and a less destructive business climate. That's the real problem in Connecticut, which saw GE vamoose to Boston last year and which even Mr. Malloy now seems to recognize.

'As a huge Connecticut employer and a pillar of the insurance industry, it must be infuriating to feel like you must fight your home state policymakers who seem blind to the future,' Mr. Malloy wrote in a May 15 letter to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. 'The lack of respect afforded Aetna as an important and innovative economic engine of Connecticut bewilders me.'

Now he tells us. Gov. Malloy has spent two terms treating business as a bottomless well of cash to redistribute to public unions. Now that his state is losing millionaires and businesses, he has seen the light. But the price of his dereliction will be steep...

The Governor--a slow learner--seems finally to have accepted that raising taxes on the wealthy is a dead fiscal end. Democrats are now proposing higher taxes on tobacco, expanding casinos and eliminating some tax breaks, though they don't want to touch an exemption for teacher pensions. The state teachers union warns that axing the exemption would impel retired teachers to relocate. A quarter of pension checks are currently sent out of state...

The state treasurer has advocated 'credit bonds' securitized by income-tax revenues to reduce the state's borrowing costs. Investors beware: Puerto Rico tried something similar with its sales tax, and bondholders might not get back a penny. Maybe Democrats should follow Jerry Seinfeld's advice to George Costanza and do the opposite of the instinct that has brought the state so low: Cut taxes."