Will Democrats Continue Maine’s Positive Economic Momentum?
Historical Precedent Indicates: “Probably Not”
By: David Deschesne
Fort Fairfield Journal, November 21, 2018
When Paul LePage took over the Maine Governor’s office in 2008, the outgoing Democrat left him with a welfare system that had EBT welfare cards being used at gambling casinos and Disneyland; no reserve money in the bank; a high unemployment rate; a bond rating that was going in the tank; businesses shying away from moving into the state; and over $700 million owed to the state’s hospitals. Over the past eight years, under the business-minded leadership of Governor LePage, the fraud and abuse of the EBT system was reigned in; the state ended fiscal year 2018 with $175.8 million in unappropriated surplus; unemployment is the lowest it’s been in over a decade; the bond rating has been increased; businesses are attracted to the state; the hospitals have been paid and there is a general feeling of optimism throughout all sectors of the economy.
Earlier this month, the state’s Finance Commissioner, Alec Porteous announced Maine was starting its new fiscal year $20.8 million ahead of projected revenues.
Maine's current economic condition is a significant achievement given the economic challenges Governor LePage faced when taking office. Maine had lost nearly 25,000 jobs from the 2007 pre-recession peak to the 2010 trough. The losses included the closure of the Brunswick Naval Air Station and the accompanying removal of thousands of military and civilian employees and their families between 2008 and 2011. That closure took millions of dollars out of the state's economy at the worst possible time, during and shortly after the 2008 and 2009 recession. The state also experienced a significant loss of jobs in its changing forest-products sector due to mill closures during the recovery. Despite these challenges, Maine's economy rebounded and continues to grow.
“We've seen repeated accounts in the media and by politicians this election season that Maine's economy is stagnant. It's not,” stated Governor LePage. “Mainers are experiencing strong, record-setting economic growth. Maine has a record-high number of employers, a record-high number of private-sector jobs, record-high revenues for the state, record-low unemployment and the fastest net-earnings growth in New England. Our poverty rate has declined to the lowest it's been since 2005, and we have the fewest number of children in poverty in the past 17 years. Maine's economy is the best it has been in decades, and our people are benefiting.”
With all that said, the socialist Democrats in Southern Maine have had just about enough of all this positive economic momentum so they came out in force to elect a governor to halt these developments and return the state of Maine to its former “equal distribution of misery” financial template that Democrats seem to be most comfortable operating in.
Maine’s governor-elect is Democrat, Janet Mills. As the State’s current Attorney General, Mills engaged in questionable legal activity with potential abuses of her office by entering into a lawsuit in another state without direction from either the Governor or legislature. But, chronic and habitual rule breakers with no respect for the law or their superiors is just the type of candidate the public has come to expect Democrats to run for public office. Now, that type of candidate holds the highest office in the state, in charge of carrying out the laws of the state—laws she has little interest in following, herself.
As a raging socialist, Mills is expected to raid the state’s unappropriated funds surplus in order to give a few months of free hospital care to Mainer’s under the state’s Medicaid program. However, she has no functional strategy to continue that free ride once those funds run out without a massive and untennable tax increase. Also on the table is returning the ability of Maine’s EBT welfare benefits card recipients to abuse those handouts by allowing them to spend their stipend at gambling casinos and trips to lush resort getaways—on the taxpayers’ dime. The Democrat party is the one that set up the ability to abuse the state’s welfare system in that way to begin with, either due to their ignorance on how to properly operate a welfare system, or perhaps deliberately as a means to achieve more votes from their constituents.
As a rabid gun-grabbing command and control authoritarian, Mainers can also expect Mills to push for excessive and unconstitutional limitations on gun ownership in Maine, as well as the right to self-defense against common street criminals as she seeks to turn Maine into the third-world cesspool that socialist Venezuela has recently become.
Economic short-sightedness has always been the hallmark of the Democrat ideology since they truly believe they are better at spending money than those in society who are actually working to earn it.
A strong, self-sufficient, working family does not need social welfare “benefits” and therefore does not need government to provide for their daily bread and shelter. Thus, they don’t have to jump through government hoops or look to government as their lord and master. This aggravates Democrats whose only purpose for attaining positions of power is for the power alone—the ability to boss other people around and tell them what to do. No successful economy was ever sustained with that strategy.
Whether Mills and her Democrat Komrades in the Legislature can continue to entice new businesses to Maine and keep an environment friendly to the businesses that are already here remains to be seen. What is certain is the Democrats will do everything they can to push people down, keep them on welfare, existing on a bare subsistence-level income and generally keeping everyone stuck in one place waiting for the next meager disbursement of government welfare payments. This government-sponsored economic straightjacket has been the key operational strategy of the Democrat party for decades and they have given no indication that they intend to change it for the better any time soon.
