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"Democrats
raise taxes. It's their way of paying for programs
that buy votes from people who don't pay high
taxes." -- Pete Waldmeir, columnist for the
Detroit News
Dear
Delegate:
In
the last few days, newspapers across our great
Commonwealth have been reporting of a deal reached
between the House and Senate leaderships to solve
our transportation impasse. Your House leaders are
going to ask you to compromise your principles and
vote for raising taxes, fees, and numerous new
revenue sources. Don’t do it!
As
the saying goes, those who do not learn from
history are bound to repeat it. Remember 2004? The
same House leaders asked you to vote for the
largest tax increase in the history of Virginia.
There is little doubt today that the 2004 tax
increase was totally unnecessary — how do you
otherwise explain the billion+plus dollar surplus
that followed?
And
what happened to the surplus? Was it spent on
transportation? No! Like pouring water on sand,
the surplus was wasted on pet projects, while new
spending called for in the state budget last year
was allowed to increase by 20 percent — a
clearly unsustainable rate of increase that will
come back to haunt us in future years.
Don’t
fall for the fallacy that doing nothing on
transportation will be the downfall of the GOP
majorities in the General Assembly. On the
contrary, what will cause a loss of the GOP
majorities is what will happen if you all go along
and raise taxes and fees, while doing nothing to
build new roads.
What
differentiates the GOP in the eyes of voters is a
commitment to cut taxes and reduce government
growth. You’re all already on a shaky ground
because of your failure to control spending.
Don’t compound your earlier errors by voting for
raising state revenues again.
The
press is reporting that you’re being pressured
not only by your caucus leaders but by such
political patriarchs as Representatives Tom Davis
and Frank Wolf, Attorney General Bob McDonnell,
and RPV Chairman Ed “fundraiser
extraordinaire” Gillespie, the new moderating
voice on the block. Just take a moment and think
what these folks stand for.
When
it comes to bringing home the pork, Davis and Wolf
are two of the biggest spenders in the House of
Representatives. Davis’ proposal for a $3.0
billion subsidy for Washington’s Metro makes the
infamous “bridge to nowhere” pale by
comparison. (See “Pouring
Water on Sand,” Sept. 25, 2006).
Davis’
support for new taxes and big government goes back
to his days as chairman of the Fairfax County
Board of Supervisors, when he supported a meals
tax increase, which was widely defeated by the
voters. In 2002 he supported the sales tax
referendum for Northern Virginia, which was also
defeated at the ballot box.
Wolf
was the only Republican from the Virginia
delegation to vote against the GOP party
leadership’s rule change requiring congressmen
to identify themselves with the spending requests
(i.e., “earmarks”) they hide in appropriation
bills. (See “Conservative
Dilemma,” Oct. 23, 2006).
The
fact that McDonnell wants to run for governor in
2009, is well known — he has been stuck in
campaign mode ever since becoming AG. Let’s be
frank: Bob McDonnell’s prospects for winning the
governorship in 2009 are dismal. In 2005 he won
the race by a mere 323 votes over his Democrat
opponent.
Although
he is generally viewed as a conservative,
McDonnell has consistently refused to sign a
no-tax pledge. He tries to appease both sides of
an issue and appears to have learned nothing from
Jerry Kilgore’s disastrous gubernatorial
campaign in 2005.
Ed
Gillespie is the new kid on the block. However,
one need not delve into his background deeply to
discover that he is another moderating RINO voice.
He’s against cracking down on illegal
immigration and was even used by the Bush
administration as the point-man to spearhead
through the U.S. Senate the disastrous Harriet
Mieirs nomination for Supreme Court Justice.
Gillespie
apparently has more in common with Democrats than
core Republican principles. His business partner
at Quinn Gillespie and Associates, is none other
than Jack Quinn, former counsel to Bill Clinton
and before that Al Gore’s chief-of-staff. Can
you think of a more despicable Democrat than one
who worked as Bill Clinton’s lawyer? Ed
Gillespie obviously has no qualms getting into
partnership with such a sleazy character.
Let’s
be honest, House Speaker Bill Howell and the rest
of the Republican Caucus leaders were not elected
for their visionary and leadership capabilities.
They were elected as compromise candidates and
they will continue compromising your conservative
ideals in their blind pursuit to hold on to power.
These
are the people that are now asking you to vote
again for a diverse collection of tax and fee
increases. It is bad enough when you increase one
tax or raise one type of fees. But increasing a
wide collection of taxes and fees is guaranteed to
alienate a number of diverse constituencies.
You
will be asked to vote for the worse of all
political scenarios. Raise taxes, but provide no
immediate or perceived transportation relief. The
newspapers are already reporting that even if the
compromise package is signed into law, there will
be no new roads built for the next 10 years or
more. In other words, you’ll be stiffing the
taxpayers while providing them with no relief from
gridlock.
If
your leaders had the best interests of the
taxpayers in mind, they’d be promoting new,
out-of-the box ideas that could immediately
relieve our transportation bottleneck, ideas such
as:
These
same “leaders” support the Metro-Rail to
Dulles extension, which, according to studies,
will do nothing to alleviate the gridlock in the
Dulles corridor. If the Dulles Toll Road (DTR) was
privatized, you could have had more than $5
billion to spend on transportation. Instead, they
are turning over the DTR to the Airport’s
authority for free, guaranteeing that a few well
connected folks will make billions while the rest
of us remain stuck in traffic.
In
closing, don’t believe for a minute that by
raising taxes and fees you will hold onto the
majority in both Houses. On the contrary, a
recently conducted poll indicates that if you
persist with raising taxes, you risk losing not
only the Senate, but your 17-seat majority in the
House of Delegates.
--
January 22, 2007
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