Riddle supports stimulus, but says you cannot keep printing money

By Scott Benjamin

Do you support the $2.2 trillion stimulus package - CARES - that was approved March 27?

"100 percent," says Jonathan Riddle of South Norwalk, who is trying become the first Republican since 2006 to win a race in the Fourth Congressional District - where Garrett Cole lives in a $5.6 million mansion in Greenwich; Bobby Valentine has a restaurant and a sports academy in Stamford; Dick Cavett of Ridgefield does 90-minute interviews in a playhouse; there is a sign that states "Home Of Kristine Lily" as you drive through the Wilton border on Route 7; a building named after Linda McMahon in Fairfield; and the WIFFLE Ball factory in Shelton.

"It should have been done sooner," Riddle added regarding the stimulus. "But I also think that the Democrats put some things in there that muddled it."

Do you support the $310 billion in additional funding for small businesses that was approved in the U.S. House April 23 for the Paycheck Protection Program?

"100 percent," says Riddle, who expects to win the GOP nomination at the convention on May 13 in the diverse district - which includes the 10,000-seat Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport; the home where National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow lives in Redding; the Quaker Farm District in Oxford, where you think that you'll see a revolutionary fife and drum corps marching up the hill; and the Bruce Park Grill in Greenwich - which features a 22-foot shuffleboard table and was voted last year by Tempo 24/7 as the best dive bar in Connecticut - but which, curiously, is within walking distance of Greenwich Avenue, which was rated in 2018 by the JLL professional services firm as the fifth most expensive street in America.

Riddle -who is a financial advisor with Altium Wealth Management in Purchase, N.Y. and previously was at ENY Melon in Greenwich - is running for the nomination against Michael Goldstein of Greenwich and T.J Elgin of Westport, according to Ballotpedia. He said that he believes he can avoid an August 11 primary.

Riddle credited Republican President Donald Trump with doing a "fantastic job" in responding to the pandemic.

"He's addressed the issues, although I would wish that he would stay on topic more," he said, apparently at least partly referring to the president's comments at some of the news briefings.

However, Riddle criticized Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) for announcing on April 9 that the schools would be closed through at least May 20.

"That is just absurd," he said in a phone interview. "There is no need to do that."

Forbes reported in February - before the pandemic - that the federal budget would incur a $1 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30.

The overall stimulus is already approaching $3 trillion since late March. The governors are clamoring for more aid with the White House projecting unemployment claims soaring to 16 percent in April. Should Congress approve more stimulus?

The apparent Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, told Politico on April 26 that the overall stimulus is going to have to be "a hell of a lot bigger " than the CARES Act.

The New York Times has reported that Trump is promoting infrastructure improvements and a payroll tax cut to boost the economy.

"There is a fine line," Riddle said regarding additional stimulus. "We need to be careful. You can't keep printing money."

However, will the economy eventually recover under its own inertia?

Economist John Mauldin of Dallas, who has written New York Times best-selling books and has a popular financial newsletter, told the Asia Times, "The U.S. is facing a deflating depression. One can't have the economic impacts we are having and think they will magically go away when the virus dies. That is not how economies and businesses work."

On April 27 the Congressional Budget Office distributed preliminary figures that the budget deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends in September, has grown from about $1 trillion to $3.7 trillion and it is estimated at $2.1 trillion for the fiscal year that will end in September of 2021.

Following the financial collapse of 2008 and the ensuing recession the unemployment rate soared to 10.2 percent in 2009 and was at 7.7 percent in the fall 2012, more than three years after former Democratic President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus plan.

In October 2011 - three years after the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to rescue the big banks was approved by Congress - the current Democratic congressman from the Fourth District, Jim Himes of the Cos Cob section of Greenwich, said in an interview at the Ridgefield Chowder Fest that consumer fear lingered.

"If your house currently has negative equity you're probably not going to be buying a new car or another expensive consumer item," the congressman said at the time regarding the continuing impact of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Will there be a sustainable rebound that won't require the serial stimulus in Japan of the 1990s and 2000s that didn't fully revive the third largest economy in the world?

Riddle said, "People are going to be more cognizant of what they're spending over the short term. You're not going to see people buying a bunch of flat screen televisions. However, there will be a return to normal in six, eight or nine months."

However, if deficits are going to surge, should the Trump Tax Reform of 2017 be canceled since it apparently was in part the cause for the increase in red ink over the last three years?

Riddle, who grew up in Westchester County. and played Division I football at Iona College, said he is "1,000 percent" behind the Trump Tax Reform.

"More money is being spent in the United States," he explained, an apparent reference to the lower corporate tax rates that reportedly have prompted to park less money overseas.

"A lot more manufacturing has come back to the United States," Riddle remarked.

CNBC reported last December that Kudlow had noted that the national unemployment rate was the lowest in more than 50 years.

Riddle complained that Connecticut's high taxes and regulations have driven some of the financial services professionals in the Fairfield County Gold Coast to Florida.

Himes voted against the Trump Tax Reform.

He told Patch.com in July 2018, "The American public understands that it hasn't been a success."

"They got a little bit more money and some very wealthy people got an immense amount of money," Himes added. "The [budget] deficit has already grown dramatically."

In 2010, Himes was one of only 38 U.S. House members, 22 of them Democrats, who voted for a version of the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles deficit reduction plan that was named after a former U.S. Senator and a former White House Chief of Staff who co-chaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

He said in July 2018 that if that package had been signed into law "we would be on the way to balancing the budget. We would not be worsening the problem with wealth concentration. In a fair way, there were tax increases and spending cuts."

In 2012, the Concord Coalition, a grass-roots organization for responsible fiscal policy, gave Himes its Paul Tsongas Economic Patriot Award, which is named after the late Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts who ran for president in 1992.

Political columnist Mark Shields said on PBS in January 2014 - six years ago - that "in a little over a generation, we have gone from the top 1 percent having 11 percent of the national income to 25 percent, and the bottom 90 percent - that is 90 percent of the people - instead of sharing 67 percent, down to less than 50."

Riddle said, "We've had more wealth separation in the last generation than at any other time in our history."

"In order to address this, I would be executing the exact economic policies that Donald Trump has put in place in 2017," he explained. "By slashing regulations and cutting taxes allowing more people to start small businesses, by lowering the entry barrier in place today. The last three years have shown the greatest increase in low wage earnings, and the rise of earnings for low-income people show greater growth than the increase for management and senior-level individuals."

"In tandem with all of the above, until the problem of inner-city education is addressed there will remain an enormous gap between those without proper education and those that come from a privileged education," Riddle added.

On another topic, he has called for limits of four two-year terms for U.S. House members and two six-year terms for U.S. senators.

"Legislation should be developed on the merits of it and not be based on relationships," Riddle said.

"We need to have some fresh ideas in Washington," the candidate declared. "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 year?' "

However, how realistic are term limits? In 1998, then-state Sen. Mark Nielsen of Danbury, who was then the Republican nominee in the Fifth Congressional District, told The Brookfield Journal that he and his wife had contributed $121,000 to his campaign and that wasn't an unusual sacrifice since you would make that financial commitment if you were starting a small business.

How many people would make the equivalent financial sacrifice of starting a small business and then be restricted to not owning it for more than eight years?

Riddle said, "I don't see it as a sacrifice or as a business. I see it as public service."

However, is the larger issue not term limits but how congressmen utilize their time?

Former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who sought his party's presidential nomination during the current cycle, wrote in his 2018 book, "The Right Answer" (Henry Holt and Co., 240 pages), that former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Md.), who had a truncated career in which he served from 1975 to 1981 and again from 2013 to 2019, had told him that years ago the House was more regularly in session from Monday at 9 a.m. until Friday at 5 p.m. and there were fewer district work periods.

Delaney stated: "We have persuaded our constituencies that they should expect us to function like mayors, going to one event after another, shaking hands, giving speeches and cutting ribbons. But that ought to be the province of local government officials."

"Would you rather have your U.S. representative spend time shaking hands at the country fair or working in Washington to gain grants for community colleges and secure funding for improving highways?" Delaney wrote. "These days our time is so limited that all we can do is pop in and out of meetings."

Riddle said, "There should be more weeks working in Washington."

The No Labels organization, which has attempted to recommend bipartisan solutions, has called for a monthly schedule of three weeks in Washington and one week in the district.

Riddle said, "What Himes is doing in the district is mostly busy work."

Riddle said he hasn't done enough research to take a position on the Stop Act, which former U.S. Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) introduced and which was featured in a 2016 report on CBS' "60 Minutes."

The legislation, which has had only a tiny number of co-sponsors, would prohibit members of the U.S. House from making phone calls to potential contributors. Campaign staff members and consultants would have to take on that chore.

Jolly complained that congressmen spend countless hours at the national committee call centers located near Capitol Hill.

In New York University Finance Professor Thomas Philippon's book "The Great Reversal" (Belknap Press, 343 pages), it was reported that after winning a special election in 2014 Republican national party leaders instructed Jolly to raise $18,000 a day in contributions.

Philippon also quoted a Democratic memo for new House members from 2013 that "advised them to set aside four hours every day to call potential donors."

On foreign policy, Riddle said he supports Trump's comments from 2018 calling on America's allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to pay their "fair share" of the military costs.

Currently in the Fourth District 37.97 percent of the voters are unaffiliated, 36.17 percent are Democrats, 24.89 percent are Republicans and 0.97 percent belong to minor parties.

Sacred Heart University Government Department Chairman Gary Rose wrote nine years ago in "Connecticut's Fourth Congressional District: History, Politics, and The Maverick Tradition (156 pages, Sacred Heart Press) that the voters in the district have a "tendency to elect free-thinking congressmen and the wealth and celebrity status of many district residents have resulted in a setting which can b e described as an anomaly in the larger context of congressional politics."

Former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays (R-Bridgeport) annexed 77 percent of the vote 1990 and captured at least 60 percent of the vote in each of the five elections during the 1990s.

However, after narrowly defeating former Westport Democratic First Selectman Diane Farrell in 2004 and 2006, Shays lost to Himes in 2008. Shays served for more than 21 years, which even today is the fourth longest tenure in Connecticut history.

Himes was the first Democrat to win the Fourth District since 1966.

The congressman amassed 61.2 percent of the vote in 2018, Rose said in January in an interview with Patch.com that what has been striking is Himes' ability to add support in the suburbs as his career has progressed.

The Charles Cook Political Report has rated the Fourth District "Solid Democrat" for the 2020 election.

What impact will the president's re-election bid have on the down ballot races this November? Patch.com has reported that Rose said at a forum shortly after the 2018 election that the "Trump factor" played a role in the Connecticut gubernatorial campaign when Lamont won in what should have been a Republican year.

Stephen Skowronek , the presidential scholar at Yale University who wrote "Presidential Leadership In Political Time" (University Press of Kansas, 280 pages), said during a talk in May 2019 at the London School of Economics that there usually is a political ideology reset every 40 to 60 years.

He said the last two came in 1932 when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt helped establish the liberal orthodoxy and in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected and then started an assault on the welfare state.

Skowronek said that Trump's tenure appears to be similar to disjunctive presidencies of Herbert Hoover, the Republican who preceded Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter, the Democrat who was in office immediately before Reagan.

He said Trump like those other two presidents is a "loner and technocrat" who is "tenuously connected to the establishment that he is trying to lead."

Skowronek declared that Trump "is outside the mainstream of conservative politics."

However, Riddle has a different perspective.

"There were people in this district that weren't sure about Trump in 2016 because he was new," he said.

Hillary Rodham Clinton captured the district, and the Darien Times reported that she was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win in that posh town since 1888.

However, Riddle declared, "With four years of a growing economy, I think that you're going to see more unaffiliated voters and Democrats go with Trump because he's accomplished more than most presidents have, and partly because they're not happy with Biden."