Senate Candidate Susan Bysiewicz on the Issues

Former Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate Susan Bysiewicz (D-Middletown) said the deficit reduction plan that was unveiled last week by U.S. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) would eliminate vital entitlement programs.

“I think the Republicans in Congress are trying to use our deficit as a way to get rid of programs that are part of the social safety net,” she said in a phone interview with Brookfield Patch.

“I think things like reducing the money for Pell [college] Grants are very harmful,” said Bysiewicz who is running for the Democratic nomination against U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy (D-5) of Cheshire.

The seat is now held by departing U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), who was initially elected in 1988.

“Chris Murphy is clearly the leader in the race,” said Robert Marconi (D-Brookfield), an assistant state attorney general who was the Democratic convention nominee in the 5th Congressional District in 2004.

“He has been very effective in the less than three months since he and Susan got in the campaign,” he said. “He has raised more than $1 million in comparison to Susan raising $500,000, and he has endorsements from three state constitutional office-holders and the other four congressmen in the delegation.”

However, Marconi, who has not made an endorsement in the race, said that a poll taken from March 17-20 for The Daily Kos indicated that Murphy only led Bysiewicz, who was secretary of the state from 1999 until early this year, by just 38 to 40 percent, with 21 percent undecided.

Brookfield Democratic Town Committee (DTC) Chairman Joni Park is supporting Murphy, but said in a phone interview that the DTC has not endorsed either candidate.

Bysiewicz said she has been endorsed by more than a combined 600 current and former state and elected officials, many of whom will be delegates at the state convention in May of next year.

Regarding the federal budget, Ryan has said his plan is designed to restructure entitlements and the tax code in addressing the record federal budget deficits of the recent years, which are projected to continue to soar in the coming years.

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has stated that Ryan has proposed changing the incentive structure for such poverty programs as food stamps and public housing, which would make it similar to the 1996 welfare reform package.

Bysiewicz said that she “opposes any additional privatization of Medicare” after being asked about Ryan’s proposal to reform that program into a menu of options that would be similar to the Part D component that has provided prescription drug coverage for non-hospitalized senior citizens since 2006.

Krauthammer wrote that under Ryan’s proposal, “Medicare would give seniors about $15,000 of premium support, letting the recipient choose among a menu of approved health insurance plans.”

“Part D is both popular and successful,” he stated. “It actually beat its cost projections — a miraculous exception to just about every health-care program known to man.”

Regarding jobs, Bysiewicz said the $787 billion economic stimulus that Obama signed in February 2009 helped avert a second economic depressions, but she is disappointed that it didn’t create more jobs, particularly in the construction industry.

She said that since she began campaigning for the seat in January, small business owners have told her that more than two years after the financial crisis they are still experiencing difficulties in acquiring credit.

“The banks have been pulling back” since the financial crisis, Bysiewicz said.

“It seems it was the bigger firms that have gotten economic recovery money and bail outs,” she said. “However, small businesses collectively create a vast majority of the new jobs.”

Murphy has said that the federal government approved a $30 billion revolving loan fund for small businesses last fall and that he has received anecdotal feedback that it has had some positive impact.

On a separate subject, Bysiewicz said she supports Gov. Dannel Malloy’s (D-Stamford) efforts to attract more funds for high-speed rail service.

“More high-speed rail service in Connecticut, which is a compact state, makes very good economic sense,” she said.

State and federal officials announced last year that they had acquired $40 million for a high-speed rail line from Springfield, Mass. to New Haven and recently Malloy has said he is trying to get $227 million from the $2.4 billion in high-speed rail funds that Florida has rejected.

However, Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson has called such programs “high-speed pork.”

“In the Northeast Corridor, with about 45 million people, Amtrak’s daily ridership is 28,500,” he wrote last November. “If the trains shutdown tomorrow, no one except the affected passengers would notice. Suburbanization after World War II made most rail travel impractical.”

Bysiewicz declined to endorse the proposal that President Barack Obama announced last September to extend the academic year for kindergarten through 12^th grade students from 180 to 197 days.

“I think we need to look at different ways of approaching this issue,” she said. “That might include having teachers more involved in the decisions that are made.”

“We also have to make college more affordable,” Bysiewicz said regarding surging tuition costs, which reportedly have exceeded the rate of inflation over the recent years.

Regarding energy reform, she declined to endorse U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham’s (R-S.C.) position that “pricing carbon is the key to energy independence.” Graham is considered the leader on energy reform among Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

Murphy said last year that “energy reform won’t happen unless you re-price carbon.”

Bysiewicz said the country “doesn’t have a national energy policy and that situation poses a threat to the environment and national security.”

“I think there are a lot of ways to accomplish that,” she said. “I don’t think that there is any one particular way.”

Bysiewicz said she supports U.S. Rep. John Larson’s (D-1) legislation to provide incentives to expand natural gas use in the transportation section, including provisions to manufacture more natural gas automobiles.

“Natural gas is in greater abundance in the United States,” she said.

“We need to encourage renewable energy to reduce out dependence and also to generate more jobs,” Bysiewicz said.

She said Connecticut is the leader in fuel-cell technology, an industry Lieberman has said will be the area of greatest employment in the state 25 years from now.

Larson has said there are eight companies doing research and development in the industry. Among them is UTC Power in South Windsor, which Lieberman has said is “the granddaddy” of research in the field.

Bysiewicz said she is impressed that The Hartford insurance company has provided equipment to allow its employees to recharge their plug-in hybrid cars while they’re at work. She said the federal government should provide incentives to allow more companies to take that step.

When asked what she has to offer that Murphy doesn’t offer, Bysiewicz said she has consistently “fought against the special interests.”

She said, for example, as a state representative in the 1990s she championed legislation that put an end to the “lavish gifts” that special interests could provide to legislators.

Bysiewicz said it became one of the strongest “gift bans in the country.”

She said as secretary of the state she took action following the resignation and conviction on accepting illegal gifts by former Gov. John Rowland (R-Middlebury) that led to a ban on pension funds for elected officials that had been convicted of serious crimes.

Bysiewicz said in 2008 she also led a coalition of secretary of the states across the country that overturned a measure by then-President George W. Bush to ban non-partisan voter registrars from registering patients in Veterans Administration hospitals.