Sullivan is confident payroll tax suspension will hasten recovery

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – David X. Sullivan, the Republican candidate in the Fifth Congressional District, says GOP President Donald Trump’s recent payroll tax suspension has helped boost the economy.

“It gives small business owners the ability to recover,” he said of the president’s recent executive order to help combat the economic impact from the pandemic.

The national unemployment rate, which had soared to 14.7 percent in April, was at 8.4 percent in August. Trump signed the executive order on August 13.

University of Chicago Economics professor Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore, a member of the president’s Economic Recovery Task Force, wrote in a Wall Street Journal column in July that a payroll tax suspension rewards “employees for returning to their jobs and working more hours by providing a 7.5 percent rise in take home pay immediately on income up to $137,700.”

Sullivan of New Fairfield, a retired Assistant U.S. Attorney, stopped short of committing to any of the proposals for further economic stimulus that have been discussed recently by the White House, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate and the Democratic-controlled U.S. House, other than saying that he definitely opposes the compromise $2.2 trillion package offered by the House Democrats.

“We have to be careful with how we spend,” he said in an interview.

He again called the Democrats initial $3 trillion Heroes Act, which was approved in the U.S. House on a party-line vote in May, “irresponsible.”

That package, which was to be a follow-up to the bipartisan $2.2 trillion Cares Act that was approved in March, was never considered in the U.S. Senate.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told a congressional committee recently that the White House would accept a package totaling as much as $1.5 trillion. The initial GOP counteroffer earlier this summer was $1 trillion.

“We’ll see if they can reconcile,” said Sullivan when asked about the current negotiations. ““The numbers have to be vetted out. Let’s see how it plays out.”

He said that he hoped that an agreement would have been reached before the congressional district work period began shortly before the national political conventions.

On another topic, he said the Democrats have endorsed a flawed national platform.

“I’m very concerned about what Joe Biden is saying,” Sullivan remarked regarding the Democratic presidential nominee’s economic package.

“He wants to raise taxes $4 trillion,” he added.

Among other things, Biden has proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. Trump had lowered it from 35 percent to 21 percent.

“Bringing back a higher corporate tax rate will kill the economy,” declared Sullivan, who will face first-term Democrat Jahana Hayes of Wolcott in the November 3 election in the 41-municipality district, which stretches from Salisbury to Newtown.

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial stated that higher corporate taxes will hurt people making less than $400,000 a year – the class that Biden insists he wants to protect – because fewer jobs will be available when taxes subtract some of the corporate profits.

However, Donald Klepper-Smith of DataCore Partners, who was chairman of former Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s (R-Brookfield) economic team, recently told Patch.com that he supported Biden’s proposal.

“You have to go there,” he exclaimed. “More people need to have skin in the game. There should be a broadening of the tax base. Some corporations are not paying their fair share. Some upper-income people are not paying their fair share.”

Sullivan is an advocate of Trump’s 2017 tax reform package, which has been credited in reducing unemployment to 3.5 percent in February, the lowest it had been since the late 1960s.

“It definitely benefitted the lower tiers,” he said.

West Hartford Town Council member Mary Fay, the Republican candidate in the First Congressional District, told Patch.com this summer that, “Everybody benefitted. People were feeling good about their households.”

“I think the pandemic changed everything,” Sullivan explained regarding the limited economic output over the last six months.

However, sources ranging from former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who both ran low profile campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination during the 2020 cycle, as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will of The Washington Post have complained that even before the pandemic the federal budget deficit for the current fiscal year would have exceeded $1 trillion. It was under $600 billion a year when the president took office in early 2017.

Said Sullivan, “It doesn’t concern me because of the way that the economy was going – moving forward.”

Brookfield Democratic First Selectman Steve Dunn recently told Patch.com that the growing deficits before the pandemic represent money “that will be paid back years later by people’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.”

Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in 2017 that, “Scott Greenberg of the nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates that 27 percent of the Republicans’ tax cuts are financed by more debt.”

Samuelson added that “until now no major Republican or Democrat has – as far as I can remember – suggested borrowing amounts that are tied explicitly to tax cuts.”

On foreign policy, Sullivan said he doesn’t fully agree with U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), who wrote in a Wall Street Journal column in June that the United States has entered into a Cold War with China.

“I don’t know that I would call it a Cold War,” Sullivan explained. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are an enemy. But they definitely are not our friend.”

Sullivan said he does agree with Gallagher that China poses a bigger economic threat to the United States than the Soviet Union did during the Cold War of the post-World War II era.

“They have a lot of money that they invest in this country,” he said.

Recently, Sullivan posted his first campaign video commercial, criticizing Hayes for saying that “All of the riots are not violent” when commenting during a June 27 radio interview on the unrest in the country.

CT Mirror has reported that Hayes has indicated that she misspoke and meant to use the word “protests.”

Sullivan noted that his campaign distributed a news release on the congresswoman’s comments on June 29, two days after the interview, and she has had considerable time to explain herself.

He added that you should “say what you mean, and mean what you say.”

“People should focus on what I’m saying at the end of that ad,” said Sullivan, referring to his comment that, “All riots are violent and they need to stop now.”

He also recently distributed a news release opposing Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D-Greenwich) efforts to extend his emergency powers until February.

Sullivan said in the interview that the General Assembly “should have a say and an active role.”

The state House Republicans made the same point on September 2 during a news conference outside the State Capitol. On September 4 a special committee of 10, consisting of legislative leaders, voted 6-4 in a party-line vote against a Republican resolution to nullify extending the governor’s emergency powers, which were to expire on September 9.

CT Mirror reported that Lamont and Democratic legislative leaders have asked the Republicans to indicate which of his 73 executive orders concern them. CTNewsJunkie reported that Paul Mounds Jr., the governor’s chief of staff, said the administration will voluntarily go over the executive orders with all legislative leaders over the next few weeks.

Sullivan exclaimed that the extension grants too much power to one person.

He added, “What would the same people be saying if President Trump was trying to do this on the national level?”