Republican Senate Contender Supports Trump's Push For Health Care Revisions

By Scott Benjamin

SOUTHINGTON – Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Dominic Rapini says GOP President Donald Trump has been correct in making the revision of health care reform the top priority of his first six months in office since it is “an urgent personal need for every American” as former Democratic President Barack Obama’s package has become “an albatross” for businesses and employees.

Rapini, 56, who grew up in Hamden and lives in Branford, said soaring premiums have stunted economic growth and too many people “can’t get one job that will pay them more than 28 hours a week” because employers don’t want to be required to provide health care coverage.

The candidate, a sales executive for Apple, said the recent report by the Congressional Budget Office that 22 million Americans would lose their health insurance under the Senate Republican proposal actually indicates that those people could choose “to participate or not to participate.”

Rapini, who is seeking the 2018 GOP nomination for the seat now held by first-term Democrat Chris Murphy of Cheshire, said Congress should encourage more tax-exempt health savings accounts for employees in which some earnings could be used for certain medical expenses.

He said he agrees with Trump that any revised package should continue to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions and that children can continue to be in their parents’ health care plan until age 26.

On another topic, the candidate said he supports Trump’s plan to reduce business taxes, simplify the tax code and place a one-time tax of $2.6 trillion on the overseas profits held by American companies.

CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow of Redding, who was an informal economics advisor to Trump during the campaign, has said it would dramatically increase gross domestic product.

Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw, who was chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under Republican George W. Bush from 2003-2005, told The New York Times in April that the usual “rule of thumb” for a tax cut is that only “one-third” of the lost revenue is recouped “via faster economic growth.”

Rapini acknowledged that over the short term the package would probably increase the deficit, but that it would eventually stimulate significant growth in gross domestic product and “you’re going to see a lot of money come back from overseas” with a 15 percent corporate tax.

However, he said he opposes a plan by radio commentator Hugh Hewitt in his 2017 book, “The Fourth Way,” to invite major corporations to bring back part of their foreign-held profits at a 15 percent corporate rate on the condition that they set up operations at a college in a low- or middle-income city and hire at least 1,000 people over 10 years.

“Any corporation is going to spend money the way that is best for the business,” Rapini said.

There is evidence that huge tax cuts have hurt the American economy over the last 53 years.

Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson has stated that former Democratic President John Kennedy’s tax plan, which was signed in 1964 by former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson three months after the assassination, is probably the worst domestic public policy decision in the United States since World War II.

He wrote that it set off a wave of inflation that caused four recessions between 1969-1981 and discouraged budget discipline.

During his 1992 re-election campaign former U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-East Haddam) noted that he was one of eight senators to vote against former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and that many of his colleagues “probably would now like to have that vote back.” Dodd pointed to criticism from Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman, who used to live in Greenwich, that the package caused record budget deficits.

W. Bush entered office with the federal government headed toward its fourth consecutive year with a budget surplus and after signing a record $1.35 trillion tax cut about six months into his tenure the federal budget deficit surged to more than $400 billion per year even before he completed his first term.

In a C-SPAN poll of scholars and journalists conducted earlier this year, the two recent presidents with the highest ratings in economic management were Democrat Bill Clinton, who ranked third in that category among the 44 chief executives, and Obama, who placed eighth.

Neither Clinton nor Obama initiated a major tax cut. Clinton signed a tax increase in 1993, his first year in office, and Obama eliminated the 12-year-old W. Bush tax cuts in 2013, the start of his second term.

Clinton oversaw the longest economic expansion in the country’s 241-year history and helped produce the first budget surplus in 29 years.

Rapini said “Clinton was the beneficiary of an incredible Internet boom” during the 1990s.

Samuelson wrote last December that Obama “stopped the Great Recession from becoming the second Great Depression.”

Rapini said although unemployment went below five percent under Obama, “GDP growth was abysmal – less than two percent.”

“What didn’t drop under Obama was the number of underemployed,” Rapini added.

On a separate subject, the candidate said Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) made the correct decision in offering economic incentives over the last three years to keep defense manufacturers Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney in East Hartford and the Lockheed Martin operation at Igor Sikorsky in Stratford, since it will foster economic development.

Rapini said that the president’s proposed budget includes an increase in defense spending. Reuters reported last month that Lockheed Martin had just received a $3.8 billion Army contract for work at Sikorsky.

Rapini said he believes future job growth in Connecticut also will come in the biosciences, information management and in new tenants at the currently empty factories in Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury

He said he expects that after achieving reforms in health care and the tax code, Trump will seek a huge infrastructure package.

However, Rapini rejected the plan by Murphy and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) to increase the gasoline tax by 12 cents a gallon to pay for some of the upgrades. The senators have noted that the tax hasn’t been raised since 1993.

“Taxing gasoline is a tax on poor people,” said the candidate, who insisted one of his goals will be to acquire more infrastructure funds for Connecticut, a state that has traditionally sent more tax money to Washington than it has received back on projects.

Rapini, who is the only candidate currently in the race for the Republican nomination, said he was inspired to run by Trump’s triumph last November. He began speaking to GOP town committees in January, formally launched his bid last month and believes it might take as much as $10.5 million to unseat Murphy.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate election since 1982 when Lowell Weicker of Essex captured a third term.

Murphy made his income tax returns public during the 2012 campaign and Rapini said he would do the same if Murphy again discloses his current returns during the 2018 cycle.

Rapini said one of the prime benefits of getting a bachelor’s degree in Biology and Psychology from Trinity College in Hartford - a Little Ivy League school - “was that I was engaged, and when you’re engaged, you develop a wide range of interests. You find out what your real passions are.”

“The interactive learning that I got was amazing,” added the candidate, who also played football and threw the hammer in track & field.

Rapini said, “I was sometimes working elbow to elbow with someone with a doctorate degree.”