By CHRIS POWELL
Commenting a few weeks ago about the public water system disasters from failed pipes in Waterbury, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said, “There is no free water, just like there is no free lunch.”
Can Connecticut Democrats rise above identity politics?
Throwing money at schools hides the learning problem
Hartford’s new curriculum: toilet training and diapers
But Blumenthal had been summoned to help with the problem precisely because there is free water, or at least what, to Blumenthal and most others, looks like free water. That is the free water produced when municipal water system modernization is financed not by its immediate beneficiaries, the jurisdictions that long neglected their water systems, but by the federal government.
Blumenthal and Waterbury’s U.S. representative, Jahana Hayes, want Congress to appropriate all sorts of federal money for water system repairs, because federal money is easier to find than municipal and state money. At least it was easier to find until Donald Trump returned as president, Republicans won a majority in Congress, and the government’s priorities changed.
The great virtue of federal government money is that, unlike most state and municipal government money, much of it doesn’t have to be obtained by taxes. It can be created just by typing on computers at the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Technically the money is borrowed into existence, distributed to the federal government’s favorites, and spent. This increases the national debt and the government’s spectacular interest costs, and these costs increasingly are “paid” by the government’s purchasing and thereby extinguishing its own debt — which is to say that it is really paid by inflation, a tax most people don’t understand and so can’t easily place blame for.
Members of Congress, especially Connecticut’s, love to be seen distributing goodies to their constituents at federal expense because their constituents and journalists seldom question them about the inflation arising from such goodies. Hardly anyone asks where inflation comes from.
There’s more unfairness here. Waterbury’s water system disasters are entirely the fault of the city itself and state government, which over the years have given priority to other things, things with more political support from special interests. And now Blumenthal and Hayes would legitimize this neglect by arranging for the rest of the country to pay to correct it so Connecticut and Waterbury can continue pursuing their mistaken but politically profitable financial priorities.
Financed by federal money, the repairs to Waterbury’s water system won’t quite be free, but they’ll be free enough to allow Blumenthal and Hayes to pose as heroes while few of their constituents will be able to identify the true cost.
Among the things Connecticut state government considers more important than maintenance of public water systems and nearly everything else state government does is abortion. Indeed, elected officials in Connecticut often seem to think abortion is the highest social good and facilitating abortion is the noblest objective of government.
This abortion fanaticism was reiterated recently when Governor Lamont decided to give the main provider of abortion in Connecticut, the state’s chapter of Planned Parenthood, $10 million from the $500 million slush fund the General Assembly authorized him to spend to compensate for cuts in federal financial grants to state and municipal government and non-governmental social-service agencies. Since 2024 Planned Parenthood had already gotten more than $6 million from state government.
It’s not that Planned Parenthood is in any financial trouble. The Connecticut Catholic Public Affairs Conference asserts, and Planned Parenthood’s Connecticut chapter hasn’t denied, that the organization has an endowment of nearly $50 million. Even people who consider abortion to be the highest social good might wonder whether, in light of Connecticut’s many compelling problems, like homelessness and mental illness neglected by state government, it might have been more responsible for state government to require Planned Parenthood to spend down some of its endowment before giving the organization still more money.
Quite apart from state government’s financial irresponsibility and the challenges to the morality of abortion, particularly late-term abortion, it may be fair to wonder why, in this age of comprehensive contraception, some of it subsidized by government, people shouldn’t pay at least for their own abortions. —
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 