Blumenthal has long been in the picture

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – He must be the most photographed person in Connecticut.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Greenwich) stands with the featured local and state officials as a scrum of family members and friends click their iPhones following the municipal inauguration ceremony.

Then Blumenthal – dressed as usual in a blue shirt and red tie – hands his iPhone to one of them so he has a picture of the moment.

At the other end of the line is Susan Bysiewicz (D-Middletown), who just announced that she is running for a third term as lieutenant governor.

Thirty-five years ago she was Blumenthal’s campaign manager when he was first elected as state attorney general.

He served in that position for five terms – 20 years.

At a Rotary Club lunch meeting in Litchfield in 2010 when he was campaigning for his first term in the U.S. Senate, Blumenthal joked that his daughter called him not the “attorney general” but the “eternal general.”

In March 2011 when there had been extensive flooding in New Milford near the Veteran’s Bridge, Republican Mayor Pat Murphy had to stop herself when informing the Town Council that Blumenthal would be coming to inspect the damage. She was so used to referring to him as the “attorney general” that she had to stop to say “Senator Blumenthal.”

He has now served three terms in the upper body. In Connecticut, only Chris Dodd – five terms - Orville Platt and Joe Lieberman – four terms each – have served more terms.

Probably every Democratic operative in Connecticut expects that he will seek a fourth term in 2028, when he will be 82 years old. Democrat Bill Clinton left the White House nearly 25 years ago. He was one of Blumenthal’s Yale Law School classmates.

David Lawson of New Milford served on its Board of Education and later made two bids for the state Senate.

When he was managing Democrat Bob Coppola’s campaign for mayor in 2009, he was astonished that Blumenthal showed up at a fund-raiser along Route 7. No one had contacted him, but somehow Blumenthal knew to stop by on his ride home from Hartford.

He has been marching in the Newtown Labor Day Parade since 1989 and he first appeared at a Brookfield municipal inauguration ceremony in 2011, when Bill Davidson had been elected to his second term as first selectman.

Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) recently signed a major housing bill to try to boost supply in the state.

Republican President Donald Trump has proposed extending mortgages from 30 to 50 years.

Blumenthal said it is worth consideration.

“Any step to make housing more affordable and enable young couples and others – police, fire-fighters – to afford housing is absolutely important.”

“I don’t know enough about the impact on finances nationally, but any step that makes housing more affordable is a good thing,” he explained. “But we need to be respectful of what financial constraints there may be under current law.”

Blumenthal added, “I would want to move carefully on a 50-year mortgage as opposed to a 40-year mortgage and a 30-year mortgage. But anything that will make housing more affordable should be considered.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently wrote in The Washington Post – the newspaper where Blumenthal was a reporter in the late 1960s shortly after he graduated from Harvard – that Republicans should abolish the Senate filibuster, where 60 votes are needed to close debate and vote on legislation.

Bessent stated, “The American people are just now emerging from the longest and most devastating government shutdown in U.S. history. And while the blame lies squarely with Senate Democrats, we cannot ignore the weapon they used to hold the country hostage: the legislative filibuster. In January, when spending considerations again come due, if Democrats once again choose to shut down the government, then Republicans should immediately end the filibuster”.

Said Blumenthal, “I think that abolishing the filibuster would be advisable in principle, but at this moment in our history we need to safeguard the rights of the minority – including Democrats who are in the minority in every branch of [the federal] government.”

Democrat George Jepsen, who succeeded Blumenthal as state attorney general in early 2011, told WXCI Radio, the campus station at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, that year, that the threshold on the filibuster should be reduced from 60 votes to 55 votes.

Remarked Blumenthal. “The interim step might be to eliminate the filibuster on certain votes, which is what I have advocated.”

He added, “For example, if there is a move to eliminate the filibuster on particular votes; to extend the health care tax credits, for example. I think there should be a majority vote to make health care affordable, as well as other necessities – electricity, food, reducing the cost of living.”

On another topic: Political Scientists William R. Hartung and Ben Freeman wrote in their recent book, “The Trillion Dollar War Machine,” that the United States could have an effective military for a lot less money.

The authors write that the defense contracting industry has almost two lobbyists for every member of Congress.

A review in Publishers Weekly stated, “The result of all this enmeshment, the authors contend, is weaponry that’s overpriced and underwhelming, like the Navy’s rickety littoral combat ship and the $2 trillion F-35 fighter-bomber, widely considered a boondoggle. Such poor performing armaments, the authors assert, end up sold to authoritarian regimes or in the hands of overly militarized American police forces; meanwhile, the U.S. defense budget swells out of proportion to domestic spending.”

In an interview for Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Hartung said that there is a “long myth that technology can win wars, which didn’t happen in Vietnam, didn’t happen in Iraq, didn’t happen with Reagan’s alleged leak-proof missile defense.”

Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had not read the book.

Connecticut has three major defense contractors – Lockheed Martin at Igor Sikorsky in Stratford, General Dynamics with Electric Boat in Groton and RTX, formerly Raytheon, with Francis Pratt & Amos Whitney in East Hartford.

Government Professor Gary Rose of Sacred Herat University in Fairfield told Patch.com in 2019 that he thought much of Connecticut’s future economic success would depend on the Pentagon budget.

Regarding Hartung’s and Freeman’s assertions, Blumenthal said, “I have concerns about our national defense. We need to be strong. The best way to achieve peace is through strength. I’ve been an advocate of military preparedness. We always should be looking to eliminate waste and overspending.”

He added, “But, I think the submarine program, the F-35 and other essential weapons programs we need to continue to fund.”

In an interview, Hartung said that, “Silicon Valley's tech firms are increasingly involved in military construction through the development of new autonomous weapons, AI-driven systems, and military technology, creating a new military-industrial complex.”

Could that have impact on the Connecticut defense contractors?

Said Blumenthal, “I don’t think I can comment on that.”