Shocker: Dem Governor Finding Unions Resistant to "Shared Sacrifice"

Dan Malloy is, as the MSM would have us believe, the exact type of moderate, sensible Democrat governor that Americans should have elected last November in greater numbers, but failed to in favor of Nazi wingnuts like Scott Walker and John Kasich. Malloy faced a yawning budget gap upon taking office and kept his campaign promise to fix it with "shared sacrifice" of tax hikes and spending cuts. Or so he thought. He got his tax hikes easy-peasy, but left the spending cuts as a TBD: "Mr. Malloy is counting on an agreement with the unions and a restructuring that will cut the number of state agencies to 57 from 81. Although the cuts remain uncertain, the tax increases are quite clear."

Someone somewhere, I'm sure, thinks that "shared sacrifice" indeed means just that, but to conservatives it is merely code for "tax hikes." We could be forgiven for thinking such thoughts based on union behavior. It is a reasonable conclusion that to unions and big government types "shared sacrifice" is a ruse strategy meaning "tax hikes and then dig in like the dickens to protect our goodies at all costs, and only as a last resort throw our newest members under the bus." The Wisconsin showdown taught us that, and like day follows night, it turns out that Gov. Malloy is having more trouble in getting the shared sacrifice from government employee unions that he was counting on. Nutmeg State voters are right to ask if their governor had any intention of cutting spending in the first place, was hopelessly naive or considers himself a superhuman able achieve what almost nobody in the past has been able to achieve. It looks as if these putatively sensible, moderate Democrats, like Malloy, are reacting to the anti-tax, fiscal responsibility wave that is sweeping the country by striking an uncomfortable accomodation with their union supporters: they'll raise taxes and mitigate the political optics by getting the unions to tolerate throwing some of their members under the bus with LIFO-driven layoffs. This is a "live to fight another day" strategy by the Union Labor/Democrat Party nexus and is indeed "shared sacrifice" of a sort, but of a very cynical sort - taxpayers and low-seniority government workers eat the turd, but long-standing government workers come out just fine. I don't think the cynicism of this strategy will come back to bite the Democrats - they never seem to get cynical about their own power. The big question is "will there be another day?"

P.S. One delicious aspect of this is that Malloy's budget hikes taxes on yoga classes. Call me a stereotyping neanderthal, but I bet that 80% of all yoga students (and 98% of all yoga teachers) in the state of Connecticut voted for Malloy. Reap, sow, all that, Ladies.