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State
Sen. John Chichester, R-Fredericksburg, the
Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is on
the warpath for higher taxes. Without wasting any
time or taking a breather from the massive tax
increase he imposed on Virginia
taxpayers last year,
Chichester already is talking about increasing taxes again in
2006.
You
will recall that
Chichester
was not satisfied with Gov. Mark R. Warner’s
$1.0 billion tax increase proposal. So he
countered offering a $4.0 billion increase in new
taxes. Chichester’s ploy was nothing less than what former President Bill
Clinton did with his triangulation strategy.
By
working closely with the Warner Administration,
Chichester
forced the more conservative House of Delegates to
go along with a tax increase which surpassed
Warner’s original submission.
As
reported before in this column (see: “Byzantium
on the James”), it is no coincidence that
the chief architect of Warner's tax plan, Finance
Secretary John Bennett, previously had served as
Chichester’s right-hand man at the Senate
Finance committee.
Chichester’s
desire for continuing to raise taxes is no secret.
He has consistently talked about the need to shore
up our damaged infrastructure, which he says we
let go dormant.
Chicheste’s
cabal in the Senate includes 17 other Republican
Senators. That is 18 out of the 24 Republicans in
the Senate. With a 3-to-1 margin,
Chichester
is pretty confident that he can control the State Senate
and steer it in the direction of higher taxes.
To
ensure total control over the Senate Finance
Committee, only senators that were committed to
voting for the tax increase were considered for
appointment to this committee last year. That
meant that at least one senator who had seniority
and should have been assigned next to this
committee, was passed over; the victim of Chichester’s trampling was Sen. Bill Bolling, R- Mechanicsville,
who is now running for the GOP nomination for
Lieutenant Governor.
Having
achieved total control over the Senate’s
tax-increase policies, Chichester
has few reservations about disclosing his future
agenda. It takes a lot of confidence—if not
complete arrogance—for
Chichester
to lay out all his cards on the table, a full year
before the 2006 General Assembly goes into
session.
As
reported in The Washington Post on
Feb.
7, 2005,
Chichester
said the legislature should wait a year to make a
major investment in what he called a "bill
stuffed deep in the back" of the state's
budget drawer. He hinted that he would consider
new taxes next year to increase transportation
spending.
In
the meantime, Chichester’s
sidekick, Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Glen Allen, has
been saying that a $1.2 billion revenue surplus is
really a $6 billion deficit. You see according to
the Senator—the only Certified Public Accountant
in the General Assembly, we are
reminded—Virginia faces $6 billion in new
commitments over and above our annual budget of
approximately $30 billion.
Well
folks, Enron, Worldcom, and Global Crossing had
Certified Public Accountants audit their books and
they all missed some of the biggest frauds of our
lifetimes!
According
to the Fairfax County Taxpayer Alliance, state
spending has grown by $9.0 billion above what it
would have had it been capped at the rate of
population growth and inflation (and this was
before last year’s enormous tax increase). So,
where are all these unmet obligations coming from?
Can we continue to allow spending to grow out of
control?
While
the Republican Party is split on the issue of
taxes, where does the Republican leadership stand
on this issue?
There
is little doubt that the GOP’s State Central
Committee has been outspoken against higher taxes.
It has issued many proclamations and some of its
members have openly challenged the tax-and-spend
Republican legislators.
Unfortunately,
the State Central Committee is not taken seriously
by the elected politicians. Even though the State
Central Committee is supposed to function as the
party's board of directors, none of its resolutions
or proclamations can be found anywhere on the
party’s website.
Even
though the party chairman, Kate Obenshain Griffin,
spoke out in 2004 against the tax increase schemes
proposed by the Republican Senate, there have been
no follow up admonishments, condemnations or party
resolutions against those who voted for the tax
increase last year. Ditto for the other anti-tax
Republican office holders, who may shake their
heads but are unwilling to challenge their
colleagues in public.
And
what of Jerry Kilgore’s position on this issue?
Kilgore is the presumptive Republican nominee for
governor. With a Democrat in the Governor’s
mansion, Kilgore has been acting as the titular
head of the Republican Party and fully expects to
be the party’s next candidate in what he would
like to be a coronation ceremony.
It
is true that Kilgore also spoke against the folly
of raising taxes last year. But he came out only
after U.S. Sen. George Allen (R) and former Gov.
L. Douglas Wilder (D) had already spoken against
the evils of raising taxes.
Kilgore
has been telling us that he’s against higher
taxes, but he has not articulated a message as to
how he would govern if elected in November. To the
contrary, conflicting messages have come out of the Kilgore camp.
For
example, Kilgore and his campaign manager, Ken
Hutcheson, have insinuated that the renegade
Republicans who enacted last year’s tax increase
should not be challenged. They have alluded that
primary contests are divisive and should be
avoided. In other words, they are championing the
party’s unwritten “incumbent protection”
rule.
When
Kilgore is saying that he’s against higher
taxes, is he speaking from both sides of his
mouth? Kilgore has refused to sign the Americans
for Tax Reform (ATR) pledge against raising
taxes—a pledge he had signed when he campaigned
for Attorney General.
To
add fuel to the fire, Hutcheson was the campaign
manager for John Chichester, as well as some of
the other pro-tax Republicans who were challenged
in 2003. This is a point of contention that
continues to irritate the fiscal conservative wing
of the Republican Party. Can Kilgore really be
trusted on the tax issue when his campaign manager
is responsible for re-electing the folks that have
saddled us with the largest tax increase in the
history of our state?
Though
misguided,
Chichester
isn’t stupid. It is hard to believe that he
would announce his intentions to raise taxes in
2006 if he didn’t feel confident that he could
advance his agenda no matter the outcome of the
November 2005 elections. Undoubtedly, if Democrat
Tim Kaine were elected as our next governor, Chichester
believes he could continue the triangulation
strategy that enabled him to successfully enact
the tax increases he had advocated all
along—excepting only a few months in 2003 when
he was facing a primary challenge.
But
what if Kilgore becomes our next Governor? Kilgore
has been unwilling to repudiate the pro-tax
Republicans. Having failed to renounce the tax
option, has the Kilgore camp already hatched a
deal with Chichester to raise taxes?
As
far fetched as this may sound, please keep in mind
what was reported in The Washington Post on Feb.
25, 2003.
R. H. Melton, interviewed Mark Warner and
reported: “… some moderate Republican
lawmakers, many facing primary election challenges
this summer, have assured him privately that they
will be his allies in the tax restructuring
effort—an essential ingredient, Warner said, for
legislative passage.”
Could
history be repeating itself? Has Kilgore also
struck a deal with the same moderate Republicans?
And if so, at what cost to the taxpayers?
Kilgore
cannot have his cake and eat it too. He must come
out strongly against taxes. This means that he
must publicly renounce John Chichester, Walter
Stosch and the other Republicans who continue to
advocate higher taxes. And he must
sign the ATR pledge.
Anything
less spells doom for Kilgore’s campaign. The
anti-tax wing of the Republican Party bears
visible scars from the many times it has been
stabbed in the back by those who promote a
cradle-to-grave nanny state. The pain is too
recent for the party faithful to sign onto the
Kilgore bandwagon solely on blind faith.
--
February 14, 2005
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