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"God, they're dumb as
rocks." --State Sen. John Chichester, referring to the House Delegates of the Virginia General Assembly during the 2006 budget negotiations.
Obviously, State Senator John
Chichester, R-Northumberland, does not think much of his colleagues in the House of Delegates. Chichester, who is affectionately referred to in this column as the “‘tax them until they’re dead and then hit them with the death tax’ Commissar,” firmly believes no tax increase is sufficient to satisfy his cradle-to-grave “spending priorities.”
In 2004 while former Gov. Mark Warner (D) was hell-bent on breaking his campaign pledge not to raise taxes and was pushing for a $1 billion tax increase, Chichester headed for higher ground and proposed an unfathomable and clearly unsustainable $4 billion tax increase. Chichester’s desire for
ever-higher taxes is no secret. He has consistently talked about the need to shore up our damaged infrastructure, which he says we let go dormant.
Astonishingly, I find myself agreeing with
Chichester on his choice of epithets in describing the House of Delegates. Only, that he missed the mark and should have included the entire General Assembly in his apt description of the intelligence quotient permeating Richmond.
The $74 billion biennial budget, passed the Senate by a 37-to-0 vote and was then sent to the House where it was overwhelmingly approved by a 91-to-2 vote.
(It would be nice knowing the reasons behind the two votes against the budget in the house.)
Voting for such monstrous spending increases sends a clear and unequivocal message: There are few if any fiscal conservatives left in the General Assembly. Voting for a bad “budget deal,” is a vote against conservative principles. No self-respecting conservatives can possibly vote for such a budgetary
monstrosity while professing they still believe in and stand for limiting and controlling government growth.
Political pundits are giving the House of Delegates kudos for standing the line and outmaneuvering the State Senate and Gov. Tim Kaine (D) from imposing another tax increase. The story goes that the “conservatives” in the House of Delegates won the day and
held the line against enacting another tax increase. That is true, as far as tax increases go. However, what is lost in this discussion is the spending side of the equation, which was allowed to grow by a staggering, stupefying, and unprecedented rate of 20 percent—from $62 to $74 billion in the 2006 to 2008 biennium.
Has your family budget gone up by
20 percent the past two years? If not, why should our state government be allowed to grow that fast? How are such explosive increases in the budget going to be sustained through the next inevitable recessionary business cycle?
So much for fiscal conservatism or fiscal responsibility! Such a Brobdingnagian increase in the rate of spending is clearly unsustainable. The money expended during this spending spree will simply vanish, like water poured on sand.
With new revenues flowing into our Treasury in Richmond at unprecedented rates, our elected representatives have opted for spending every dime. Very little of the new money was set aside for the rainy-day fund or invested in our “damaged infrastructure” as lamented by Chichester, the overlord of tax-and-spend politics.
Worse, even though every one acknowledges that our transportation system faces massive gridlocks, very little of the new moneys were set aside for transportation infrastructure improvements. Instead, we hear cries for the need to identify and dedicate new sources of funding to transportation.
Never mind that every time we increased taxes and dedicated the new revenues to transportation, we have always ended in the same predicament. The new funding never suffices and a few years later there is a cry for even more funding.
Already, there is talk of another special session of the General Assembly later this year to address transportation funding. In such a meeting, the cries for new spending on transportation—that is, tax increases—will be overwhelming.
All bets are off whether the House of Delegates will continue holding the line against raising taxes. A more likely scenario will be that several RINOs (Republicans in Name Only)
will peel off from the “conservative” majority in the House of Delegates and vote with the Democrats in raising taxes—just like they did in 2004,
which resulted in the largest tax increase in the history of Virginia.
The Budget for the 2006 to 2008 biennium is a clear example of political shortsightedness and fiscal profligacy. One cannot help but wonder where are the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives in the General Assembly?
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June 26, 2006
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