In the small flurry of debates in the waning days of October, U.S. Rep. James Himes defended the federal stimulus and health care bills, while painting his Republican opponent and state Sen. Dan Debicella as having a short memory both on the crisis facing the country two years ago and of Debicella”™s own support for federal moneys benefiting his district of Shelton.
Debicella has lost no opportunity to cast the campaign in one overarching light ”“ a vote for Himes is a vote for a continuation of the stimulus and bailout culture architected by the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress.
“If you believe that Washington has been getting it right, then Jim Himes is your man,” Debicella said.
“We have now seen nine months straight of private sector job growth,” Himes countered. “This is coming from 750,000 jobs lost every single month when I got (to Congress). The economy is growing.”
The tri-state economy continued to expand at a modest pace in September and October, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Fed said the labor market has been mixed recently, however: while manufacturers that continue to add jobs and firms in a wide variety of industries plan to increase employment in the months ahead, Fed contacts in New York City report that the financial industry continues to shed jobs and that hiring for office and administrative jobs generally remains sluggish.
Debicella derides the stimulus as adding $10,000 in government debt for every paving job in Fairfield County, in exchange for a few paving jobs on the Merritt Parkway. He says he would repeal half of the stimulus money that has yet to be distributed, and has advocated tax cuts as a better way to engineer an economic recovery. He has offered few specifics on what policy he would have supported in the fall of 2008, however, when the credit markets froze, setting off panic in the financial and employment markets.
“Folks, we were spiraling into another Great Depression ”¦ and yet we get complaints that we haven”™t fixed this one in 20 months,” Himes said. “The stimulus should have had a lot more of what we need in this county, which is infrastructure money. I”™m not happy with the fact that too many of our municipalities used stimulus dollars to pave roads. If you talk to the business groups in this district and say what are the biggest challenges to businesses moving in, they will tell you that it is our transportation infrastructure ”¦ and its our housing situation.
“By the way, you know who one of the big fans of the stimulus bill actually is? Dan Debicella, because every time stimulus money came into his district, he issued press releases taking credit for it,” Himes added, rattling off a series of examples. “When you hear my opponent say he doesn”™t support the stimulus ”“ that he would repeal it ”“ that”™s not what he was telling his constituents. ”¦ You can”™t call it a pork barrel stimulus, and issue press releases taking credit for projects that benefited your community.”
According to the Connecticut Business & Industry Association and other groups, the high cost of health insurance remains a top complaint of businesses that are already here. Like Republican state Sen. Sam Caligiuri who is running for the seat of U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, saying while the president is sure to veto any attempt to repeal the health reform bill outright during the next two years, he would work to “defund” the law, while working to reform the malpractice legal system, and to spur interstate competition between health carriers.
“There are some good provisions in it,” Debicella said. “There are good provisions in any bill that is 2,000 pages long.
“Right here in Connecticut, Aetna wants a 20 percent increase in insurance rates ”“ because of Jim Himes”™ vote,” Debicella added. “We will cover 6 percent more people under this health-care bill, but the 94 percent of us with insurance, including every single Medicare recipient, is going to pay more because of it.”
Himes said he stands by the law, and that Connecticut businesses were suffering rapid insurance rate hikes long before it was passed.
