The Rell administration wants taxpayers to view the 2009 State of the State address as a hard-nosed call for fiscal austerity. The governor’s speech did feature some tough talk about “cuts” and the need to “shrink” government. We’ll see if Rell risks her still-considerable political capital to perform a desperately needed right-sizing of Connecticut’s public sector.

But Rell’s address also contained a litany of deeply misguided statements — claims that expose the many ways Connecticut’s elites fail to grasp the state’s fundamental problems. Herewith, a look at a few of the biggest whoppers.

As [families] cut back on expenses and forego new purchases, so must we. And we must do it at a time when, as is the paradox of government, more and more families will be looking to us for help.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? In Bailout Nation, everyone looks to government for “help.” It’s worse in the Nutmeg State, where welfare programs are vast and costly. A 2007 analysis by the Urban Institute found that despite Connecticut’s low poverty rate, only seven states spent more, per capita, on major welfare expenditures such as Medicaid, food stamps, and daycare subsidies. (Adding other programs would likely move the state’s ranking toward the top spot.)

The research that confirms the superiority of private charity is voluminous. Yet politicians, either duped by or willing participants in the “progressive” movement’s nostrums, continue to grow the welfare bureaucracy. Evidently, votes are more important than results.

In recent good economic times, we made strategic and historic investments in our state. We took advantage of a strong economy to invest in education, in transportation, in healthy children, and in the technologies that will lead us into the future.

First, “recent good economic times” weren’t so good. In 2007, Connecticut finally recovered the 60,000 jobs lost in the turn-of-the-century downturn. But even then, at the crest of the recovery, employment in the private sector was lower than it was in 1989. And median household income — half earn more, half earn less — keeps dropping in Connecticut.

Second, you “invest” your own money, not someone else’s.

Third, the expenditure boosts the governor touts are major contributors to the fiscal woes she has “lost countless hours of sleep worrying about.” Her proudest achievements — e.g., huge new subsidies to Connecticut’s wasteful government schools, massive borrowing for questionable transportation projects, big expansions of Medicaid, and new corporate-welfare schemes — made the state’s ocean of red ink deeper.

We are leading the bioscience revolution and we are home to cutting-edge technologies and life-changing medical advances. Stem cell research, aerospace, nanotechnology, fuel cells, pharmaceutical research — all position Connecticut for the industries and jobs of the 21st century.

Apparently the governor has been to one too many ribbon-cutting ceremonies. The few investments high-paying industries do make in the Nutmeg State are usually subsidized by taxpayers, and as such, are of dubious merit. Connecticut’s fuel-cell companies seem to be on the “cutting edge” of layoffs, unprofitability, and declining stock values. Much of the aerospace business is expanding in — if not relocating to — the South, where costs and taxes are much lower. And nanotechnology? Nearly every state is plowing pork into that trendy field. (It’s nearly as fashionable as “green power.”) What makes Connecticut a likely nanotech hub?

As for good jobs, last month the left-wing lobbying group “Connecticut Voices for Children” noted that “the industry sectors in which Connecticut lost the most jobs between October 2007 and October 2008 pay more, on average, than the industry sectors in which Connecticut had the greatest job gains over this period. The average 2007 wage in the five employment sectors showing largest employment losses was $64,301, compared with an average wage of just $49,036 for jobs in the four sectors with the highest employment gains since October 2007.”

“Jobs of the 21st century” indeed.

This will be a time of shared sacrifice.

Will it? Will state employees, coddled and protected for decades by their friends in the legislature, be made to sacrifice? The governor, in office for nearly four years now, has never shown a propensity to challenge government-worker unions. In Connecticut, taxpayers are always the ones made to sacrifice, not the professional public-sector class.

Perhaps Rell is willing to do battle with the forces of Big Government, in a titanic struggle that will shape Connecticut’s economic and fiscal health for years, if not decades, to come. But her annual address revealed that she still has much to learn about the true state of the state.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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