Hrezi promotes progressive platform in solid Democratic district

By Scott Benjamin

SOUTHINGTON – President Joe Biden has maintained a low profile but always keeps a couple of pots boiling.

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has stated that the White House has proposed a “$7.5 trillion increase in discretionary spending.”

“To put the number in perspective, we spent $4.1 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars over nearly four years to wage and win the Second World War,” he recently wrote.

Muad Hrezi of Hartford, who is running for the Democratic nomination in the First Congressional District, says, “I’d like to see more” spending.

He complains that the Biden Administration – which has been called the most progressive since Lyndon Johnson’s 1960s Great Society – hasn’t established a $15-an-hour minimum wage for everyone – just those employed by federal contractors -and the child care tax credit for now is only temporary.

“For some people it is too expensive for them to afford child care,” explained Hrezi, 26 - who has a bachelor’s degree in Public Health from the University of North Carolina and formerly worked as a health policy analysis for U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Hartford).

Hrezi is trying to wrest the party’s nomination from U.S. Rep. John Larson, 72, (D-1) of East Hartford, who at the end of his current term will be tied for the second longest tenure from Connecticut in the lower body.

Said Hrezi, who bills himself as a progressive, “Larson has been beholden to corporate interests for two decades. We need to have systematic change.”

Larson is a member of the powerful House Ways & Means Committee and previously held the fourth-ranking leadership position in the U.S. House Democratic caucus.

Hrezi has mounted a public relations campaign, recently attracting coverage on WTIC-TV Fox 61 in Hartford as he and supporters held an event at a Hartford service station where gasoline was sold for an hour at $1.22 per gallon. He said the event underscored the surge in prices to more than $3 a gallon following the recent cyber-attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which runs from New Jersey to Texas.

In a statement to Fox 61, a Larson spokeswoman wrote that the congressman has delivered for the district and Hrezi is engaged in “gimmicks.”

Berlin emergency medical technician Andrew Legnani, 32, is also seeking the Democratic nomination.

Larson has taken more than 60 percent of the vote in every election since 2000.

Wall Street Journal columnist Joseph C. Sternberg wrote in his 2019 book - “The Theft Of A Decade,” Public Affairs, 288 pages – that millennials, such as himself, have a different view of the economy than their Baby Boomer parents since, among other things, there have been fewer good-paying jobs since the 2008 Great Recession.

“One high-profile survey found more Millennials would prefer to live in a socialist society (46 percent) than prefer capitalism (40 percent), and six percent would prefer “outright Communism,” Sternberg wrote.

Sacred Heart University Government Department Chairman Gary Rose, who has written a raft of books on Connecticut politics, said in a phone interview with Patch.com that “the state has become more liberal in recent years, but there is a difference between liberal and progressive, and I would say that Connecticut is not a progressive state.”

If elected next year, Hrezi would become the youngest congressman from Connecticut since former Republican governor John Rowland of Middlebury was elected in 1984, at age 27, from the Fifth District.

The First District includes the metro Hartford area, parts of northern Litchfield County and the Bristol area. And is home to 18 major insurance companies that have a presence in or near Hartford, ESPN in Bristol and a major defense contractor in Francis Pratt & Amos Whitney in East Hartford.

Voters have not elected a Republican to the seat since 1956.

West Hartford physician Larry Lazor recently launched a campaign to annex the GOP nod for the 2022 election.

On other issues, Hrezi, who currently is a substitute teacher in the Southington public schools and a track & field coach at Glastonbury High School, supports Medicare For All.

“Health care is an actual right,” he explained in an interview with Patch.com.

The cap on income exposed to Social Security taxes currently has a $137,700 threshold. Former President Barack Obama pledged during his 2008 campaign to raise that to $250,000.

Hrezi declared, “The entire cap should be removed.”

He said he supports Biden’s plan to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent and the tax on wealthy individuals from 37 to 39.4 percent.

However, when it comes to the proposed new discretionary spending, Hrezi added, “I don’t think that we have to pay for all of it with taxes.”

CNN has reported that on September 30, 1998 – 34 days before Larson captured his first term in Congress – the federal government had a $70 billion budget surplus – the first black ink in 29 years – and then-President Bill Clinton called it “a landmark achievement.”

Eleven years ago the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - which was appointed by Obama, and was commonly referred to as Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles – made an unsuccessful attempt to balance the budget through a series of spending reductions and tax increases. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich voted for a version of that legislation and told Patch.com in 2018 that if it had passed the nation would be on its way to a balanced federal budget.

Now the Congressional Budget Office’s projects a $2.3 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year. Washington Post columnist George Will has stated that the annual deficit for the last fiscal year was over $1 trillion even before the pandemic.

Hrezi declared, “I don’t think that we’re operating with a deficiency of resources. I think there are a wealth of resources here.”

“You should look at inflation,” remarked Hrezi. “That is what we should be worried about.”

The 4.2 percent consumer price increase in April was the biggest since 2008.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Ray Dalio – the owner of Bridgewater Associates in Westport, the world’s largest hedge fund, has indicated that, “Ambitious government spending raises the risks of inflation and a devaluation of the U.S. dollar.”

Hrezi said, “Our economy is extremely dynamic and so to provide a definitive answer is impossible. But, many economists are telling us that this inflation trend is short-term and due to the unique circumstances of the pandemic. Still the Biden Administration should keep an eye on inflation, just as any administration should.”

Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell stated, “It could well be true that parts of the Biden fiscal agenda will have some inflationary effects; based on the limited data available, we don’t know yet, and I don’t want to suggest there is no risk of that outcome. But it’s also too early to freak out. So far it looks like prices are picking up not because there’s too much money sloshing around, but rather because of a bunch of temporary, idiosyncratic shocks and supply chain issues that seem unlikely to lead to self-sustaining inflation.”

Hrezi is critical of the congressman’s record on regulating Wall Street, citing his support for the 1999 partial repeal of the Carter Glass-Henry Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated banks investment and commercial portfolios.

Former U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said at the time that the repeal would turn the banks “into casinos.”

Critics have insisted the vote in 1999 led to the Great Recession in 2008, where some big banks were overleveraged as much as 40:1.

Hrezi exclaimed, “Larson voted to deregulate Wall Street.”

However, Investopedia has reported that others have tried to “debunk” that theory, “noting that the major players in the subprime meltdown weren’t combination commercial-investment banks.”

Hrezi said the 2010 Chris Dodd-Barney Frank bank reform – which increased standards for capital, liquidity and compliance – didn’t go far enough.

“We still need reform,” he said. “I think that there are people on Wall Street that are playing games with our money.”

Regarding congressional reform, Hrezi said he supports ranked choice voting and public financing of elections.

However, he said that he disagrees with former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, that the U.S. House would serve its constituents better if it spent more weeks in Washington working from Monday at 9 a.m. through Friday at 5 p.m. Delaney has argued that voters would support that revision if it would result in more money for community colleges and infrastructure at the expense of congressmen appearing at fewer ribbon cuttings.

Hrezi said, “I don’t think that members of Congress suffer from a lack of background.”