Politics & Government
Stevenson supports reducing capital gains taxes to tame inflation
Running in Fourth Congressional District Republican primary, former Darien first selectman says she wants to reform education
Jayme Stevenson Michael Goldstein Donald Trump
Joe Biden Jim Himes Barack Obama
By Scott Benjamin
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FAIRFIELD – On a partly cloudy summer afternoon as congressional hopeful Jayme Stevenson greets voters at the Fairfield Sidewalk Sale & Street Fair, she admires a nearby restaurant which initiated outdoor dining two years ago when there was social distancing and has now made it “permanent.”
However, in a formal interview just moments earlier, she lamented that people have far less discretionary income to dine anywhere as they “desperately recover from the devastating impact of the global pandemic.”
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At one of the merchant booths, Ben Scionti, 22, of Fairfield tells a reporter that “Inflation and gas prices” are his chief concerns.
The inflation rate of 9.1 percent is the highest in 41 years.
Stevenson said that the Federal Reserve Board is following the traditional route of increasing interest rates “to slow our economy to cool inflation” but there are “a lot of negatives.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that about two in five economists surveyed believe there is a “50/50” chance of a recession in the next year.
Stevenson said one way to fight inflation is to follow Republican former President Ronald Reagan’s formula from 40 years ago: Reduce capital gains taxes and encourage more “private investment.”
“It’s another tool to allow our economy to grow,” she explained.
Stevenson - who served for 10 years as first selectman of Darien, scoring five lopsided victories - faces Greenwich eye doctor and attorney Michael Goldstein, who qualified after collecting petition signatures, in the August 9 Republican primary in the Fourth Congressional District – the only one this year for a U.S. House seat in Connecticut. Stevenson easily won the convention endorsement in May.
No debates have been scheduled before the GOP balloting. Goldstein stated via e-mail that Stevenson has declined two opportunities to debate.
The winner will oppose 14-year incumbent Democrat Jim Himes of Greenwich in the November 8 election. The Sabato Crystal Ball rates the race as “Safe Democrat.”
Stevenson said that high inflation is largely due to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan funding that Himes supported last year. She said it overstimulated the economy. Himes recently told Patch.com that there are higher inflation rates in other countries, and that the federal spending brought the unemployment rate down to 3.6 percent.
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell has stated that it only has been below 3.6 percent in three months during the 21st century.
After successfully placing all four darts in the game bulls-eye, Stevenson tells a shopper, “Yes, Stamford is in my district. It has 17 towns from Greenwich to Oxford.”
Volunteer Valentina Cuccolo of Darien hands him a piece of campaign literature as Communications Director Rowena White prepares to get more pictures with shoppers and merchants for the Stevenson Facebook page.
The district includes four of the nine largest populations in Connecticut. It has some of its wealthiest towns, as well as Bridgeport, which has a 6.1 percent unemployment rate, and communities with cow farms.
Sacred Heart University Government Department Chairman Gary Rose, who wrote a book in 2011 on the Fourth District, stated in an e-mail message to Patch.com that Stevenson has an “advantage” with the convention endorsement.
He noted that Goldstein supports Republican former President Donald Trump, who carried the Fourth District in the 2016 GOP primary, but by a smaller margin than in Connecticut’s other four congressional districts. He wrote that Trump’s support in the district may have declined since the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Rose stated, “The district has normally supported moderate Republicans for Congress, so as it stands right now it seems to me that Stevenson is more in line with the type of Republican voters who will be voting on August 9. But primaries have been known to produce surprising results.”
Stevenson, who grew up in Pennsylvania and earned her college degree in Arizona, moved to Connecticut 31 years ago. As she walks to the Fairfield Green she praises the New England-style central business districts that attract tourists to the Nutmeg State.
Her nearby headquarters on the Post Road is next to one of Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s campaign offices. Stefanowski’s running mate, state Rep. Laura Devlin (R-134), is from Fairfield.
Connecticut has not elected a Republican governor or a GOP congressman from the Fourth District since 2006.
That year the Democrats recaptured control of the U.S. House with a platform plank that called for the federal government to be able to negotiate under Medicare Part D the prescription drug prices for the non-hospitalized senior citizens, who in some instances had been reimporting them from Canada.
In 2003 Republican former President George W. Bush had signed the legislation, which represented the biggest reform to Medicare since the program was established in 1965 under Democratic former President Lyndon Johnson. The prescription drug component took effect in 2006.
Now, 16 years later, Democratic President Joe Biden is seeking to get approval for the federal government to negotiate the prescription drug costs.
Stevenson said the better solution is to embrace billionaire investor and reality television star Mark Cuban’s plan to sell more of the less-expensive generic drugs. CBS News has reported that his company “offers more than 800 generic drugs, but plans to add name brand medications as well.”
Remarked Stevenson, “It would cut out all the middle people that are involved in the prescription drug industry that adds layers of cost. In some cases, generics are a great place to start to streamline expenses for people.”
Harvard pollster John Della Volpe wrote in The New York Times this spring that, "Less than one in 10 Americans between 18 and 29 years old describe ours as a healthy democracy,” as they have grown up through the Great Recession, the pandemic and school shootings.
However, Stevenson, the mother of five children of Generation Z, said she has gotten a different message as she canvasses neighborhoods and attends public events.
“What I hear from young people on the campaign trail is that they’re hopeful,” she said.
However, what about the generation that is currently between kindergarten and 12th grade?
Stevenson said the teacher-parent rapport deteriorated as parents watched remote lessons during the pandemic.
She said that they “had concerns. When they expressed their concerns to their children’s teachers and administrators, there was pushback.”
“There was always a lot of enhancement that parents could provide that the district couldn’t provide,” said Stevenson. “Today we are seeing exactly the opposite.”
"The current [Biden] administration wants to take over some of those important family and parental roles, and I don’t believe in that,” she commented.
If elected, she said that she would seek “to codify in any reasonable and legal way the rights of parents in participating directly in how their children are taught and what their children are taught.”
Stevenson added, “I am a very big proponent of giving families a choice of where their children go to school.”
She said that she supports having vouchers in which “the money follows the child.”
In 2010, Democratic former President Barack Obama endorsed extending the academic year to 197 days, about 17 days longer than the current calendar. He said the United States trailed other developed nations in that department.
Stevenson declared, “I’d discuss more than 197, if it were up to me.”
She acknowledged that students need “well-timed breaks” during the academic year, but, “I don’t really understand why kids are not in school for part of what is now considered our summer break.”
Stevenson said that in some of the under-resourced school districts students often experience a “summer slide” by being out the classroom for an extended period of time and “the early part of the next school year focuses a lot on remedial.”
On another topic: How has the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision altered the dialogue on abortion?
“I do believe strongly in states rights and federalism,” Stevenson said. “Problematic for me is that with the Dobbs decision, it has created medical inequality for women across the country” since in some states they and their physicians “risk going to jail.”
“There is no equivalent for men with any health care procedure,” she explained.
“As a strong principled Republican, who believes in freedom and liberty, you have to believe in women’s rights to make those health care decisions with their families and their doctors,” she added.
Stevenson commented, “I support a women’s right to make those decisions with her doctor through the first trimester. Certainly, in the case of rape and incest and if there is a medical reason for that being the best course of action.”
She added that the “viability framework” that has been utilized through the years is “a little tenuous” because of the changes in “medical science.”
Himes, who is pro-choice, has called for ending the lifetime appointments for U.S. Supreme Court justices.
He recently told Patch.com, “Let's give these guys 18-year terms and stop the demographic roulette by president by president."
Stevenson countered: "Our nation’s founders gave lifetime appointments to Supreme Court justices so they can objectively interpret the U.S. Constitution on behalf of the people, and remain insulated from outside political pressure. Only now that the previous [Donald Trump] administration nominated three Justices, coupled with the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade, does Jim Himes and his colleagues want to meddle with our Constitution.”
Resources:
https://www.edweek.org/policy-...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/m...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://patch.com/connecticut/...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/opinion/young-voters-midterms-de
https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-the-fed-easing-too-soon-risks-repeat-of-stop-a
