Himes off and running for a ninth term

By Scott Benjamin

NORWALK – One news report indicated that when he met with then-state Attorney Gen. Richard Blumenthal at a Greenwich diner in early 2007 he said he was willing to do “difficult” but he wasn’t willing to do “impossible.”

Jim Himes was then the chairman of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee and he was interested in capturing a congressional seat that the party hadn’t held since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House.

However, there was reason for optimism, since Democratic former Westport First Selectman Diane Farrell had just lost two consecutive photo-finishes – in 2004 and 2006 - to Republican Chris Shays, who had been in office since 1987. Himes took the plunge, defeated Shays, and in the recent contests has annexed around 60 percent of the vote.

Now Himes is running for a ninth term in the Fourth District, which the Sabato Crystal Ball rates as Safe Democrat. Greenwich, once a leader in Republicanism in Connecticut, has more registered Democrats than Republicans and the party holds all three state House seats for the first time ever.

Three Republicans – former financial executive Bob MacGuffie of Fairfield, former state Senate candidate Daniel Miressi of Norwalk and physician and attorney Michael Goldstein of Greenwich -will compete for the Republican nomination on May 20 at the GOP convention in Fairfield.

In Norwalk Concert Hall with a wreath of balloons decorating the stage and a “Himes” lawn sign posted on the podium, the congressman offered “hats off” to another Greenwich Democrat, Gov. Ned Lamont, and the General Assembly for balancing the budget, paying down the debt and bringing more “people and companies” into the state.

He says that Democratic President Joe Biden has been “a pretty visionary leader” with victories on the largest infrastructure package since the Eisenhower Administration, a commitment to energy reform and negotiated prices for prescription drugs under Medicare.

He cautions that a return to Republican former President Donald Trump would reinforce a U.S. Supreme Court that is already “restricting the freedoms of Americans.”

But after his 15-minute acceptance speech, then lots of hugs, handshakes and photo ops, he and his wife, Mary, and his campaign manager, Francesca Capodilupo, have repaired to a conference room.

“Thirty-eight minutes or something,” Himes says about the crisp, clean and quick convention that nominated him in a district that stretches through 17 municipalities from Greenwich to Oxford.

What about the current high inflation?

Himes was elected in 2008 as the Great Moderation ended – a roughly 25-year period when there had been only two mild recessions for a grand total of 16 months – and the Great Recession began as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Then, the chief concern was an unemployment rate that would rise to 10 percent in 2009 during Democratic President Barack Obama’s first year in office and eventually recede to 4.7 percent when he departed in January 2017.

Obama had a record of 1.2 percent inflation during his first four years – the lowest of any of the last seven presidents during their first term, according to Dan Clifton of Strategas Research Partners.

It was at 1.9 percent for Republican former President Donald Trump’s one term, which immediately preceded Biden’s arrival.

Under Biden, who will likely face Trump in a rematch this fall, it has peaked at 9.1 percent and has averaged 5.5 percent to date, the highest since Democrat Jimmy Carter left office more than 43 years ago. Clifton’s statistics indicate that inflation had been low or had been falling under each president from Reagan through Trump.

Himes said, “I think the White House continues to put too much stake in economic statistics and not enough on what people feel when they’re in the grocery store. We hear from the White House Council of Economic Advisors that inflation is really down, but people go to a grocery store and still see an expensive chicken and they don’t want to hear statistics”

“I think they could have done better on the messaging,” he asserts.

Unemployment is at 3.9 percent – which is considered good - and gross domestic product through the first quarter of 2024 advanced by 1.6 percent – which is considered to be somewhat meager.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that part of the reason for the continued inflation is that housing prices have remained too high for too long.

Remarked Himes, “We have a massive undersupply of housing in this country. We need between five and eight million additional units of housing in this country.”

“The number one problem is [local-based restrictions]. It is not something the federal government can easily change. There are areas of the country where we need to find a lot more housing.”

“In Connecticut, Bridgeport is ripe,” he added. “Parts of New York City. . . the areas like Bed-Stuy [Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn] that were sort of disadvantaged urban communities.”

He continued, “In the city of Stamford they’re opening up hundreds of units. In Norwalk they’re putting up hundreds of units. It has to be done intelligently. It should be mostly in the cities because we need to preserve our open space.”

Lael Brainard, the director of the president’s National Economic Council, recently called for increased taxes on corporations and the ultra-wealthy to allow the tax reductions from the 2017 Trump tax cut to stay in place for the middle and lower classes after the 2025 expiration date.

Himes commented, “There are a lot of areas where the tax code is distorted for corporations and the wealthiest.”

He noted that under Trump the corporate tax rate was reduced from 35 percent to 21 percent. Himes said it should be at “27 or 28” percent.

Himes declared, “Our tax code punishes lower income people and is overly generous to the wealthiest Americans. I agree with the president that we should not be raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.”

The federal debt exceeds $34 trillion and the Congressional Budget Office reports that during the first half of the current fiscal year the interest on the debt exceeded the military outlays.

Himes commented, “At some point in time Congress will wake up and it may take an outside event. It could be a concern in the world that we’ve accumulated too much debt and people will eventually have a very different conversation and that conversation will include a bunch of things that everybody hates – additional tax revenue, a reform of our entitlements, which is going to be done without hurting the poorest people in this country.”

“If you are a very wealthy senior citizen you don’t need that [big] Social Security check,” he added. “There will be a reform to entitlements, and if somebody is not willing to say that, they’re not being serious about the fiscal situation in this country.”

He underscored that it won’t be accomplished by just focusing on “waste, fraud and abuse” or eliminating “foreign aid, which is one percent of the federal budget.”

During his first term he was one of 38 U.S. House members to support the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles debt reduction plan.

David Walker - the former U.S. Comptroller General and a former Bridgeport resident who discussed the debt crisis on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in 2008 - has said Simpson-Bowles “would have more than gotten the job done.”

Said Himes, “[There were] all these unpopular things in there. It is the only real budget that we ever voted on to pass. And in all these years since, I’ve been beat up by the left and the right for agreeing to it.”

But if it took an executive order from Obama to create the Simpson-Bowles Commission – after Congress didn’t take the lead - and there was such meager support for its recommendations, would another commission now, 14 years later, be any more successful in trimming the debt?

Himes remarked, “There are some people who don’t want a commission because they would have to address issues that they don’t want to deal with. I would support a commission. The virtue of a commission is that they can step back and do something that is just [appropriate] for the American people. A commission can step in and say ‘here is a just proposal as opposed to legislators trying to preserve their pet programs.”

During Trump’s tenure, he advocated for a weaker dollar. Would that benefit the American economy?

“A weaker dollar would help some people and hurt others,” said Himes. “A weaker dollar is good for exporters, but it is very bad for importers. I’m not a big fan of the federal government manipulating the dollar. I am a markets guy. I sort of believe the dollar should trade what it trades. We have a massive import economy. You weaken the dollar and you raise the price of imports.”

What is he most proud of since he arrived on Capitol Hill in January 2009?

He said that Barney Frank, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who then chaired the House Financial Services Committee, “asked me to really lead on writing Dodd-Frank [the financial services reform, co-authored by former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-East Haddam), that was approved during Himes’s first term to address the Wall Street implosion.]”

Himes had worked on Wall Street for about 12 years before becoming an affordable housing executive and then being elected to Congress.

He reflected, in Congress “you get to be a big part of some small things and a small part of some big things.”

He said, “Dodd-Frank in the end has kept the economy a lot safer since 2008.”

Himes hesitated and added that he could not leave that answer at “one thing.”

There also was ObamaCare, the Affordable Health Care Act, also approved during his first term. It has covered millions of people.

Himes said he also couldn’t leave out the importance of constituent service. The emotional rewards, for example, of presenting medals to a deserving Korean War Veteran.

He said, “There is no substitute for listening to people.”