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"Fool me
once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on
me." – anonymous
Gov.
Mark “tax-hike” Warner (D) has decided to end
his administration with a bang. One of his last
acts in office was to submit the 2007-2008
biennium budget.
And what a budget
it is! It calls for $72 billion in spending over
the next two years—the largest budget in a
series of escalating budgets. That’s more than
an 18 percent increase from the last
biennium—don’t you wish working family budgets
grew by 9 percent or more each year?
Even with the $2
billion surplus, that still leaves a considerable
deficit to cover the proposed new spending. The
numbers are hard to follow, since there is no
clear demarcation between the state budget vs.
current spending or the budget surplus and its
effect on future spending.
The 2004-2006
budget was pegged at $60.8 billion. That means
that Warner is proposing $12 billion in increased
spending. Parenthetically, it was only 10 years
ago (1996), when $12 billion covered the
state’s entire General Fund expenditures for just one year.
Warner has not
proposed any tax increases, so the manner in which
the budget deficit will be covered remains a
mystery. But one thing is clear, there won’t be
enough money to cover Warner’s proposed new
expenditures.
In the 2004
session of the General Assembly, the House Rules
Committee passed a resolution asking Gov. Warner
to resubmit his budget. The resolution was based
on what its sponsor, Del. Bob Marshall,
R-Manassas, called an unconstitutional submission
of the budget.
Warner’s budget
violated the one-object rule that requires
legislation to have only one purpose. By mixing
spending with revenues (e.g., Warner’s budget
called for a tax increase that had not yet been
approved by the General Assembly), Warner was in
violation of state law.
At the same time,
Warner violated another statute he had signed into
law a mere year earlier, the Taxpayer’s Budget
Bill of Rights. This act sought to make the budget
transparent and accountable, so that ordinary
citizens could follow the budgeting process.
In 2004, however,
Warner decided that it was more convenient to
simply disregard the bill he had signed into law,
then to comply with it. Apparently, Warner’s
administration discovered that Byzantine budgets
had a purpose—if knowledge is power, the
powerful surely do not want to share that
knowledge.
So much for
Warner being a reform-minded governor, one who was
elected on the promise to run the state like a
business. But then again, this was the same Mark
Warner who promised not to raise our taxes.
A German
politician once said: “Great liars are also great
magicians.” Gov. Warner surely fits this
description as he continues to enjoy a high
approval rating, even though he has repeatedly
deceived the voters.
But Warner does
not operate in a vacuum. It takes a lot of willing
accomplices for a governor to get away with such
deceptions and illegalities—how else can one
describe Warner’s broken promises or repeated
violations of state statutes?
The fault of
course rests with the leaderless Republican
majority in the General Assembly. The full House
failed to take action on the House Rule
Committee’s 2004 resolution asking the Governor
to resubmit his budget. Nor did House leaders say
anything about Warner’s budget failing to meet
the requirements outlined in the Taxpayer’s
Budget Bill of Rights act.
Is it any wonder
then that Warner has chosen to pull the same trick
again? Since he was not challenged two years ago,
he submitted another budget which projects
spending that greatly exceeds current revenues.
And although
Warner has not submitted a tax increase proposal,
one does not need a crystal ball to see that one
is inevitable if the General Assembly approves the
proposed spending levels. As a matter of fact, a
number of tax-and-spend voices in the General
Assembly have been echoing the need for raising
taxes.
With Gov.-elect
Tim Kaine (D) just about ready to take control of
the state, Warner and Kaine have probably figured
that it would be better if Kaine submits the
inevitable tax increase proposals. This way, Kaine
would have some leeway, and if he proposes a tax
increase that would only cover a smaller
budget—he would appear as more reasonable,
willing to gain bipartisan support.
In other words,
we are in for a replay of the 2004 triangulation
strategy. That time, it was Sen. John
“tax-them-until-they’re dead and then hit them
with the death tax” Chichester,
R-Fredericksburg, who proposed a $4 billion tax
hike; this made Warner’s $1.5 hike seem more
palatable.
Republican
leaders in the House of Delegates had the
opportunity in 2004 to stop Warner’s budget dead
in its tracks. Instead they chose to bury their
head in the sand and look the other way. Don't be
surprised if we see a replay in 2006.
--
January 3, 2006
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