Bloomberg will reduce budget deficit by raising taxes on wealthy

By Scott Benjamin

MILFORD – Brett Broesder, who is managing Mike Bloomberg’s campaign in Connecticut for the Democratic presidential nomination, says the former New York City mayor has the equivalent of an AAA bond rating.

And it's not just because he is, according to Forbes, the ninth richest man in the world.

"He came in [as mayor of New York City] after 9/11 and 12 years later he left it with a budget surplus,” said Broesder during an interview at one of the 10 Bloomberg campaign headquarters in the Nutmeg State. There are two in each congressional district.

Connecticut will hold its primary on April 28.

Former New York Times columnist Bill Keller wrote in 2013 that Bloomberg left the Big Apple in a better place than when he arrived at Gracie Mansion.

Not only did Gotham rebound from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center but it survived the 2008 financial crisis.

Occupy Wall Street was not part of the vernacular when Bloomberg was initially elected.

However, does Bloomberg need to change the subject from the economy, since there’s not much gloom as the nation is enjoying the longest expansion its 244-year history?

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote recently that John Kennedy won in 1960 emphasizing the missile gap and Richard Nixon prevailed in 1968 with a pledge toward law and order.

Bloomberg is running on the slogan: “Mike Will Get It Done.”

But, wouldn’t the admirers of Gotham’s most famous real estate mogul say that when it comes to the economy, “Donald has already gotten it done.”

The Washington Post has reported that Gallup polls indicated that 68 percent of Americans in 2020 are satisfied with the economy in contrast to just 46 percent when Trump took office in January 2017.

“The most challenging thing in a presidential election is to be the party out of power when there is a strong economy,” Lynn Vavreck, the UCLA Political Science professor who wrote a landmark book in 2009 on presidential campaigns, “The Message Matters,” (Princeton University Press, 232 pages), told Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus in 2019.

Unemployment is at a 50-year low under Republican President Donald Trump as he seeks a second term.

The Washington Post reported that economic growth was steady at 2.3 percent in 2019 and inflation has been tame. Trump also got a free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada approved in the U.S. House a feat that contrasts with the failure of his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, in getting the proposed 13-nation Trans Pacific Partnership to a vote.

Brooks wrote that “an opposition party can retake the White House in a time of rising economic conditions . . . but it can’t do it. . . . . by denying the felt reality of a majority of Americans.”

However, is there a hidden reality?

The Hill reported last year that former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who is seeking the 2020 Republican presidential nomination ,criticized the president for burdening the economy with deficits “of a trillion dollars every year” following his supply-side tax reform of late 2017.

Former South Carolina Gov. and former U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, who withdrew last fall from the Republican presidential race, wrote recently in The New York Times that, “We have never run deficits this big in peace time. The fastest growing spending item for the federal government is interest on the national debt.”

Broesder said, “Mike believes that in the end public spending has to be paid for. President Trump has ignored this, and has put the government’s debt on an unsustainable path. He is committed to addressing the gross domestic product to debt ratio”

University of California at Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, advisors to Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, wrote in their 2019 book, “The Triumph Of Injustice” (W.W. Norton Co., 229 pages) that the ultra-rich are paying at the lowest tax rates since the 1920s.

Broesder remarked that Bloomberg’s plan calls for “taxes that put the additional budget on those who can best afford to bear it by reversing the Trump tax cuts for high-income earners, restoring the top rate on ordinary income from 37 percent to 39.6 percent.”

Larry Kudlow of Redding, the director of the National Economic Council, in 2016 co-authored, with Brian Domitrovic, “JFK And The Reagan Revolution” (Penguin Random House, 250 pages) which endorsed the supply-side tax reforms of presidents John Kennedy, a Democrat, and Ronald Reagan, a Republican. They stated that federal officials needed to again endorse the “free market principles of limited government, low tax rates and a strong dollar.”

However, Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson has stated that the Kennedy tax cut is probably the worst domestic policy decision in the United States since World War II.

He wrote that the tax reductions were partly responsible for four recessions between 1969 and 1982 and the policy made it more politically acceptable to run budget deficits. Since the Kennedy tax cut was signed there have been only five years – 1969 and 1998-2001 when there were surpluses.

Former Greenwich resident David Stockman, the director of the federal Office of Management & Budget criticized in his 1986 book, “The Triumph Of Politics” Public Affairs, 466 pages) the economic program that he helped create under former Republican President Ronald Reagan.

In a New York Times review of Stockman’s book, Michael Kinsley wrote, “A presidency founded on a pledge to balance the federal budget managed to double the national debt in just four years.”

When former Republican President George W. Bush signed the $1.35 trillion tax reduction in June 2001, the country was in the fourth consecutive year of budget surpluses, all of which had been submitted by Democratic President Bill Clinton, who had increased taxes in 1993 and then followed policy of fiscal discipline that, along with Republican congressional leaders, addressed deficit reduction and welfare reform.

The budget that W. Bush submitted in October 2001 went into deficit, as has every federal budget since then.

Regarding trade, Broesder said Bloomberg supports the efforts of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her caucus to improve the proposed United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA).

“The Democrat’s plan lowered pollution, increased infrastructure resiliency, eliminated handouts to big companies and included provisions to lower drug costs,” he added. “It has the strongest enforcement mechanisms of any U.S. trade agreement.” The proposal would replace the North American Free Trade Agreement that Clinton signed in 1993.

As for the future, Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler wrote in their recent book, “The Future Is Faster Than You Think” (Simon & Schuster, 384 pages) that there will be more upheaval and wealth creation in the next 10 years than the previous 100 years combined as a result of such factors as Artificial Intelligence and the Elon Musk hyper-loop train.

Broesder said that Bloomberg “will launch a major research and development initiative to create up to 30 new growth hubs in regions that need good jobs the most. The investment – modeled on the federal programs that brought us the Internet and the bioscience industry – will focus on generating scientific breakthroughs in areas such as public health, hydrogen power, green technology and sustainable agriculture.”

Brooks recently applauded Bloomberg for transforming the City of Heroes to the point where it is second in the country, behind Silicon Valley, in technology investment.

University of California at Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti, who in 2012 wrote “The New Geography Of Jobs” (Mariner Books, 304 pages) has stated that the future success for the American economy is in trying to emulate the five major innovation hubs – Silicon Valley, Seattle, the North Carolina Research Triangle, Austin and the Route 128 corridor in Massachusetts. He has stated that usually each new innovation-related job creates up to five spin-off positions in the local economy.

Regarding the presidential campaign, Broesder, who worked for Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz (D-Middletown) during the 2018 state campaign, said that he is encouraged, noting, for example, that 70 people attended an outreach session recently in Stamford and volunteers have been manning phone banks for weeks, including making calls to the 14 states voting in the March 3 Super Tuesday primaries.

Former Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch and former New Haven Mayor Toni Harp have endorsed Bloomberg.

To win the general election, Broesder said among the Democrats prime targets are: suburban women who voted Democratic in the 2018 mid-term election; blue-collar workers who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 but went to Donald Trump in 2016 and people of color who had supported Obama in his two races but didn’t go to the polls in 2016.

Entering the race just last fall, Bloomberg did not compete in the first four primaries/caucuses, held in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Dan Balz, the longtime political writer for The Washington Post, wrote shortly after former Vice President Joe Biden’s resounding victory in the February 29 South Carolina primary that the race has been recast into a two-way campaign between front-runner Bernie Sanders, the Vermont U.S. senator who was second in delegates to Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, and Biden.

Said Broesder, “I think the race is far from over.”

Dan Pfeiffer, who served as communications director in the Obama White House, has said 80 percent of his time on the 2008 campaign was on what the mainstream news media might report, and with the changes resulting from Twitter and Iphone any 2020 campaign devoting that amount of time on those activities will lose.

Broesder agreed that digital advertising and the social media have become larger components in campaigns, even to the point that some candidates are running fewer television commercials.

He added that Bloomberg has the resources to match Trump, who in 2016 “was light years ahead of where the Democrats have been on digital communication.”