Chris Powell: Must everyone be on the Conn. Payroll?

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Are annual incomes of $250,000 a year for a couple and $100,000 for a single person not enough to support a family in Connecticut?

That’s the implication of legislation proposed by many state legislators that would pay people $600 every year for each of as many as three of their children. Along with the so-called earned income tax credits offered to the working poor by the federal government and state government, this kind of thing is starting to look like a program of guaranteed annual income.

The original idea of earned income tax credits was to increase the incentive to work of poor people who were receiving welfare benefits. But welfare benefits for people earning more than $100,000 a year imply that poverty and inflation in Connecticut have exploded even as state and federal elected officials have been proclaiming prosperity.

This implication is strengthened by clamor in the General Assembly to require the state’s Medicaid program to provide free diapers to insured infants -- and it is estimated that 40 percent of births in Connecticut are now to women covered by Medicaid. That is, women on welfare.

The cost of living has soared in recent years. But it has not yet occurred to elected officials that the poor might be helped most simply by stopping inflation, not by creating more welfare, which adds to inflation if it is not matched by an increase in economic production.

Poor people also might be helped still more by improving their education and work skills. But Connecticut has given up on education, having replaced it with social promotion, thereby guaranteeing that every year thousands of young people reach adulthood qualified only for menial work -- and needing more welfare.

DeLAURO'S KICKBACKS: The federal government is the biggest business in the world and very lucrative for those in power.

Take Connecticut U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, now serving her 34th year in Congress. When Democrats have held the majority in the House of Representatives, DeLauro has been chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Now that Republicans hold the majority -- just barely -- DeLauro is the committee's ‘‘ranking" member, the leading member of the minority party, who still may retain great influence over appropriations. 

Simultaneously DeLauro has been national finance chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and has just been elected to another term. 

So if you want money from the government, DeLauro is a good person to befriend, and one way of befriending her is to donate money to the Democratic fundraising committee she runs. 

This is a kickback operation. DeLauro didn’t invent it but gets much credit for distributing federal money throughout Connecticut and the country for all sorts of goodies financed by borrowing and money creation -- that is, inflation money.

Apparently someone else in the government is in charge of inflation, though DeLauro acts as if she has no idea who it is.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).