Lee Elci: All right, here we go. A little late, but better late than never, of course. Our good pal Red Jahncke is joining us. Now, if you don’t know who Red is, I don’t know where you’ve been. Maybe you’ve been under a rock, but Red runs the show over at the-red-line.com. It’s a place you should always visit, for sure. You can check out what he writes. He contributes to many different publications and has been a friend of the show for a long time. Red, good morning. How are you today, sir?
Red Jahncke: Hey, good morning, Lee.
Lee Elci: All right, so I have a question for you. You were mentioned at the Yankee Institute for adding to the massive body of evidence of favoritism by Connecticut Democrats toward government employees and unions. Could you elaborate on some key pieces of evidence from that body that you found most compelling?
Red Jahncke: Well, I think what you’re referring to is noteworthy. A couple of weeks ago, this issue of state employee compensation and how extraordinarily generous it is broke into the news cycle. I’m happy that last week, Hearst newspapers ran one editorial after another of their own suggesting that state employee compensation should be reviewed and a wage freeze considered.
To answer your specific question, this began back in the 1930s and ’40s when Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on the record saying that unions had no place in government. The function of a union is to negotiate across the table from an employer, which works in the private sector but not in the public sector, where both sides are on the same side of the table.
Lee Elci: All right. Red Jahncke is with us, and we’re chatting again. He’s been a major driving force behind conversations about employee wages, Governor Lamont, and everything associated with that. So let me ask you this. One of the editorials in Hearst was about Governor Lamont’s decision to offer special treatment to employees affected by DOGE reductions. What’s your take on this?
Red Jahncke: Well, this is just extraordinary. He’s already overpaying his own employees significantly. Now, because some federal employees working in federal offices located in Connecticut might be laid off, he’s suggesting special, extra unemployment benefits for them. These benefits would exceed the standard unemployment insurance available to private-sector workers. It demonstrates a sense of entitlement that’s hard to understand.
Lee Elci: Also mentioned in this piece, there was no special help given to CVS employees, Pratt and Whitney employees, or Rheem Manufacturing employees, right?
Red Jahncke: Correct. Anyone laid off by those companies receives standard unemployment insurance. Yet, somehow they become second-class citizens compared to federal employees who might work in federal offices in Connecticut. Of course, this is entirely partisan politics. Ned Lamont uses this to wage a partisan battle—as an extreme left Democrat—against the Republican administration. It’s about politics, not fairness. He doesn’t genuinely care about these federal employees; they’re simply pawns.
Lee Elci: You know, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, Red.
Red Jahncke: Quick sidebar. Dr. Biggs, who completed his study for Nutmeg Research that I oversaw, is a nationally renowned retirement benefits expert. He conducted a study about seven years ago covering federal and state workers. The group enjoying the most significant compensation increases were federal workers. Yet, we’re worried about federal workers being laid off despite their substantial salaries. This is partisan warfare by Ned, pretending to care about federal workers, who are actually doing quite well. They’re just pawns for political gain, allowing him to appear on social media or MSNBC, shedding crocodile tears.
Lee Elci: Right. We’ve only got about three minutes left, but I want to ask you: if DOGE becomes something America embraces, and we find out a year from now that we saved half a trillion dollars, do you think Democrats in the state, led by Lamont, would ever turn inward and look at the waste in state government?
Red Jahncke: They would only create an illusion of doing that. They wouldn’t genuinely do it. Ned plays this game of spending beyond the cap. When initiatives exceed the spending cap, they go off-budget. For example, there’s a special early childhood program costing around $300 million that was taken off-budget. Had it remained in the budget, it would exceed the cap. They repeatedly move items off-budget, eventually losing track, allowing them to avoid the spending cap. When Lamont talks about fiscal discipline, nobody in this state should believe him. He’s bypassed the guardrails, spending freely with his liberal friends, without hesitation or accountability.
Lee Elci: You can find Red at The-Red-Line.com. There’s great content there, and he’s writing for various other publications. Brother, I appreciate you. Sorry we had to cut it short today. We ran out of time. I’ll talk to you next week.
Red Jahncke: Sounds good. Thanks.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.