Lamont blames Trump, GOP Congress for increasing federal deficit

By Scott Benjamin

NORWALK – It was time to throw the confetti and sound the trumpets.

On September 30, 1998 the federal government produced a budget surplus.

That hadn’t happened since 1969, about the time that the Miracle Mets clinched the National League East crown and were ascending toward their first World Championship.

A deficit reduction program endorsed by Democratic President Bill Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress had produced the surplus. It happened again in each of the next three years.

In 2000 there was a projection that continuing on that course, all of the federal debt could be eliminated by 2009.

This spring the federal debt exceeded 100 percent of gross domestic product. The United States has not ended a fiscal year with those circumstances since 1946.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont placed much of the blame on the Republicans.

He says Republican President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill has added “$2 trillion a year in debt.”

“That will have to be paid for by our kids,” he said after nominating U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich on Monday, May 11, for a 10^th term.

Critics have said the tax cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill is adding to the red ink. Further, they claim it mostly benefits the wealthy.

Lamont declared, “There is not a fiscal conservative left in the Republican Party down in Washington.”

Retired hedge fund executive Ray Dalio of Greenwich has called for limiting deficit spending to three percent annually going forward.

Lamont of Greenwich said he thinks that can be achieved.

[The federal government] needs to do a little more of what we’ve done in Connecticut,” the governor exclaimed. “We inherited a fiscal mess and we started turning things around.”

CT Mirror Budget Reporter Keith Phaneuf recently wrote that Connecticut has produced eight consecutive balanced budgets under Lamont and since 2020 has cancelled $11 billion in pension debt.

Connecticut has faced challenges since the pension system for the state employees that had been structurally under-funded each year from 1939 through 2010.

“You cut spending and raise revenues,” Lamont explained in an interview with Patch.com.

On a separate subject, Lamont signed a major housing bill last fall.

Ginny Monk of CT Mirror has reported that it, “requires towns to create housing growth plans, changes minimum off-street parking requirements, expands fair rent commissions and incentivizes towns to take steps to allow more housing, among other measures.”

In their 2025 book, “Abundance,” Derek Thompson of The Atlantic and Ezra Klein of The New York Times wrote that America’s housing shortage could be partly addressed by building more modular homes.

Is that a viable option in Connecticut?

Lamont commented, “It is up to the mayor and the first selectman. We’re saying to the towns, ‘You take the lead.’ “

He said that more so than 20 years ago, a lot of new construction is “multi-family” and “about 80 percent of it is in our cities.”

However, Lamont noted that the “the largest per capita increase” in housing currently is in suburban Wilton, which is part of the Fairfield County Gold Coast.