Riddle supports $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package

By Scott Benjamin

Jonathan Riddle - who is trying to put the Fourth Congressional District back in the Republican column, where it was every election from 1968 through 2006 under Lowell Weicker, Stewart McKinney and then Chris Shays - says he endorses the White House’s offer to seek at much as $1.9 trillion in stimulus for pandemic-ravaged economy.

He dismissed the Democratic U.S. House $3 trillion HEROES proposal, which was approved on May 15, as “a wish list,” but said he is comfortable with the current less-expensive plan that is being negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In March, the federal government promptly approved the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in response to the pandemic. However, negotiators have been stalemated for months in reaching a second major stimulus package.

“You have small businesses that are closing,” said Riddle, who supports more funds for the Paycheck Protection Program.

“They need help,” he explained.

Riddle, who lives in South Norwalk, said he also supports more funds for states and municipalities.

Former Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Brookfield) said during an October 2008 news conference in Danbury, shortly after the onset of the financial crisis, that during recessions states are usually burdened with growing costs for Medicaid and unemployment compensation.

However, Riddle remarked that there is a “fine line” on how far to extend unemployment benefits.

“You are seeing it now,” he said in phone interview. “There are people who are not going back to work because they have unemployment payments and get more money than if they were hired for a job.”

In July Stephen Moore, a member of Trump's Economic Recovery Task Force, and Casey Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and author of a recent book on Trump's economic policies, opposed an unemployment benefits extension in a Wall Street Journal column.

"The unemployment benefits extension would discourage work," they stated. "According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would pay 5 out of 6 workers more to stay unemployed than to return to their jobs."

Riddle faces Democratic incumbent Jim Himes of the Cos Cob section of Greenwich in the November 3 election. Himes captured a sixth term in 2018 with 61.2 percent of the vote in the 17-municipality district, which stretches from Greenwich to Ridgefield to Shelton. It includes Connecticut’s first, third, sixth and tenth largest municipalities, respectively – Bridgeport, Stamford, Norwalk and Greenwich.

CTNewsJunkie columnist Susan Bigelow recently wrote that the Fourth District is “currently beyond Republican reach.” She noted, for example, that “Greenwich, once a bastion of Republican support, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and sent Democrats to the General Assembly for the first time in decades in 2018.”

Regarding the presidential campaign, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently wrote that Democratic nominee Joe Biden has a formidable lead over Republican President Donald Trump in the national and battleground state polls, yet even after a pandemic and the accompanying economic recession a recent Gallup Poll reported that 56 percent of Americans surveyed think they are better off today than four years ago when the president was elected, even though the federal government ended fiscal 2020 in September with a record $3.1 trillion budget deficit.

“I don’t believe any of these polls,” Riddle said of the surveys that indicated Biden is likely to capture the White House.

Has the president’s response to the pandemic been lacking? The February 2020 New York Times/Siena poll – before the pandemic when the unemployment rate was the lowest in 51 years – indicated that 65 percent of voters surveyed thought Trump would be re-elected.

Said Riddle, “This is a global pandemic. The pandemic is not hurting the president.”

He indicated that in addition to wearing masks, greater emphasis should be placed on maintaining a proper diet and using Vitamin D.

Economist Allison Schrager of the Manhattan Institute said during a recent Zoom discussion sponsored by the Yankee Institute, which is based in Connecticut, that the pandemic will “accelerate” changes in society that were already occurring, such as working from home.

Riddle said, “There are a lot more people working from home. I am worried about the commercial real estate market.”

“You are going to see more work done from home in the financial securities industries,” exclaimed Riddle, 31, a director for Altium, a financial consulting and wealth management company.

“Businesses are going to look to reduce their overhead,” he added.

However, he said the “silver lining” is that recently residents from New York City and Westchester County have been moving to suburban Connecticut.

“Houses are on the market for just days in Connecticut,” he said. “It has helped to revive Connecticut.”

“You can thank Cuomo and de Blasio for driving those people to Connecticut because of the high taxes in New York,” Riddle commented, referring to New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Riddle said in Connecticut, which has supported the Democratic ticket in every presidential election since 1992, the candidates running for the state legislature will be driving the turnout because of the endorsements many of them have received from police unions.

Riddle said that he and many Republican state legislators opposed the recent police reform bill that Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) signed.

He said that, among other things, the legislation is “too restrictive” on police searches.

Riddle declared that he agrees with Republican legislators that Lamont should curb the police reform through the emergency powers granted to him during the pandemic, which in September were extended another five months into February of next year.

Although he also said he opposed the decision to extend the powers.

“There are no checks and balances,” he explained. “You have a dictator running Connecticut.”

Karl Rove, the former political director for Republican President George W. Bush, wrote in a July Wall Street Journal column that Trump needed to define what he would do in a second term – as former Democratic President Bill Clinton did in 1996, W. Bush in 2004 and former Democratic President Barack Obama did in 2012.

Has Trump done that?

Riddle said he believes that in a second term the president would seek major infrastructure improvements, more school choice and an end to the common core, as well as improvements to health care that will lower premiums.

He applauded the recent efforts by Trump and his son-in-law, White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, to achieve normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Israel and Bahrain.

Remarked Riddle, “This is something that those nations have been trying to accomplish since 1967.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a Trump critic, wrote, “if [Trump] and Kushner helped to nurture this deal on their way out the door, good for them.”

As for the campaign, Riddle said that as a result of the pandemic he has done limited fund-raising since many residents have lost their jobs or are not working as many hours. He said his campaign activities have included doing volunteer work with civic projects and doing socially-distanced canvassing.

On another topic, Riddle has called for term limits a position that was center-piece of the Republicans’ Contract With America platform of 1994 under former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It was never enacted.

Riddle wants to limit House members to eight years and senators to 12 years.

He told Patch.com in April: "We need to have some fresh ideas in Washington, Some of these people have been there 30, 35 and 40 years and they say we need to fix the country. Well the question is: 'What have you been doing for all of those years?' "

However, CNN has reported that during an appearance in Cleveland in March 2015 Obama said that the most effective political reform would be mandatory voting, which is practiced in about 30 countries, including Australia.

Obama said, “It would be transformative if everybody voted – that would counteract [campaign contribution] money more than anything.”

Regarding taxes, Riddle said he supports boosting the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes that was included in the president’s 2017 tax reform.

“It should be increased,” he said. “There are people who want to live in wealthy communities, such as in Fairfield County, and they should not be so penalized for wanting to be in towns with good schools and good infrastructure.”

He praised Trump’s deregulation of sectors of the economy, which have included removing onerous health sector regulations which have resulted in lower prescription drug prices, according to a recent book by Mulligan, the University of Chicago economist who worked for Trump’s Presidential Council of Economic Advisors.

Said Riddle “The deregulation has had a huge impact. We’re seeing it in agriculture. But we’re not seeing it anywhere in Connecticut because of the regressive state regulations.”

Riddle said he opposes Biden’s proposal to increase the corporate tax rate. Trump reduced it from 35 percent to 21 percent. Biden wants to raise it to 28 percent as part of his plan to pay for rebuilding the economy.

Declared Riddle, “If you want to move companies out of the country, then increase the corporate tax rate. You are also going to reduce manufacturing.”

Biden also wants to boost the top individual tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, where it stood in the 1990s under Clinton.

Riddle said, “You can’t increase any of the individual tax rates, particularly after a pandemic.”