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“Raising
taxes won't balance the budget. It will
encourage more government spending and less
private investment.” –-Ronald Reagan
Just about everyone predicted that the 2006
session of the General Assembly would generate cries for raising
taxes as legislators gathered in Richmond. But no one
imagined the cacophony of shouts, bellows, alarums
and roars that would emanate from the capital.
Gov. Tim Kaine (D) did not
waste any time in proposing new taxes. At least
Gov. Mark Warner (D) had the decency to wait a
couple of years before breaking his campaign
pledge not to raise taxes. With Kaine we are
assured that we won’t have to put up with such
niceties.
Kaine is proposing to
generate $4 billion over the next four years to
fund transportation projects across the state. He
wants to increase the car sales tax by two
percent, increase the car insurance tax and
dedicate one-third of it to transportation, raise
registration fees for heavier vehicles, increase
fines for certain traffic violations, and use the
budget surplus for one-time expenditures.
Not to be outdone, Sen. “tax them until
they’re dead and then hit them with the death
tax” John Chichester, R-Fredericksburg, along
with the RINOs (Republican In Name Only) that
control the state Senate, are proposing their own
series of tax increases. They too want to raise
about $4 billion over the next four years. But the
Senate plan calls for even more new tax-increase
initiatives than the Governor’s plan.
The Senate calls for a two percent increase in the
car sales tax, dedicating one-third of auto
insurance premium tax to transportation, applying
the state’s sales tax on gasoline sales, begin
applying the sales tax to auto repairs, apply the
same tax rates to diesel fuel as currently applied
to gasoline, increase vehicle registration fees by
$10, and hit SUVs with an additional $10
registration fee.
All talk of
additional taxes comes in the face of an
unprecedented budget surplus. But our legislators
have already spent most of the surplus without
even considering refunding part of it to the
taxpayers.
By definition, a surplus
consists of tax collections that exceed what is required to cover the expenditures
called for in the budget. When you break out a
twenty dollar bill to pay for a lesser purchase,
you expect to get back change, the difference
between the purchase price and the bill you turned
over. But that real world example, does not apply
in the la-la land where our government
operates.
Not to be outdone, four
legislators from Northern Virginia (NOVA) are
proposing to raise even more revenues. According
to these big spenders, the money raised through
their proposal will be allocated to the Northern
Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) to fund
local transportation projects in the area.
Parenthetically, the NVTA was to have been funded
by the sales tax increase that was proposed in the
2002 sales tax referendum. Once the voters
convincingly voted down this asinine proposal, by
all accounts the NVTA should have ceased to exist.
But just because the voters said no, that does not
make a bureaucracy go away—its backers persevere
until they can get their pet project funded.
Three NOVA Republican legislators, Del. Dave Albo,
R-Fairfax, Del. Tom Rust, R-Herndon, and Sen.
Jeannemarie Devolites-Davis, sided with the most
out-of-touch liberal democrat, Kenneth Plum,
D-Reston. They propose civil penalties in the form
of surcharges for certain offenses relating to the
operation of a motor vehicle by persons residing
in NOVA.
These additional
penalties apparently apply only to NOVA residents.
In other words, residents not residing in NOVA
caught committing the same offenses in this area,
are not subject to the additional fines. Yet NOVA
residents will be subject to these penalties
regardless of where the offense is
committed.
This bill is the new and
improved version of a similar bill submitted by
Albo and Rust in 2005. It was a bad idea then and
it is a bad idea now. It is no secret that for
each dollar NOVA sends to Richmond, only a small
fraction comes back. Depending on how
government goodies are priced, only 20 to 45 cents
on the dollar returns.
Albo and Rust obviously
want to exaggerate the disparate treatment that
NOVA residents are subjected to by our Robin
Hood-like government in Richmond. Worse, Albo
continues to propose this sort of legislation in
the face of an apparent conflict of
interest.
You see, Albo makes his
living as an attorney representing traffic
violators in court. A cynic might therefore
conclude that Albo’s sole motivation in raising
the penalties imposed on traffic offenders is to
ensure that more of them would seek attorneys to
represent them in traffic court.
Although I am confident that this is not
the case, I sure wish that the General
Assembly would rein in the good old boy network by
stiffening up the ethics rules. For starters, it
should be prohibited for legislators to submit
legislation in any area that directly benefits
them, whether professionally or personally. You
would think that this would go without saying, but
apparently such ethical cannons need to be spelled
out for certain folks.
What is amazing
about the debate over taxes is that no
legislator has seen fit to propose any
eliminations or reductions in existing government
programs. Unfortunately, when it comes to the
state budget, our legislators operate with a
single mindset—increase spending and raise
taxes.
A tax-increase fever of new
proportions has apparently hit Richmond. Just like
the way in which flu spreads through casual
contact, this malady has actually infected too
many of our legislators. Unlike the flu however,
no vaccine exists to thwart the catastrophic side
effects that stand to befall on Virginia families.
--
January 30, 2006
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