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Little
Boy Blue
Like
the fabled farm boy who fell asleep while the farm
animals ran wild, Virginia voters appear oblivious
to out-of-control state spending -- surging 36
percent potentially in just four years.
Aren’t
gas prices already high enough? Not according to
former Gov. Mark R. Warner, newly minted Governor
Timothy M. Kaine, and Swedish-socialist Republican
state Sen. John H. Chichester, R-Northampton.
After
the record tax increase of 2004, $1.4 billion over
the first two years alone, and an accumulated
surplus of $2 billion since then, the tax-greedy
trio now want to increase gas taxes to raise
another $4 billion in state funds in just the
first four years. They insist that money is needed
for transportation. But what about the sharply
increased taxes we are already paying, and the
record surplus they have generated?
Little
Boy Blue, come blow your horn.
The
sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where
is the boy who looks after the sheep?
He’s
under the hay stack, fast asleep.
That
pretty much describes the fast-asleep voters in
Virginia, who don’t know that Virginia has the
most out-of -control state budget growth in the
country. Tax and budget growth trends in Virginia
are now well to the left of California and
Vermont, not to mention formerly liberal Maryland
and whacked out D.C.
The
last two-year budget, for fiscal years 2005-2006,
actually increased state spending by an extremist
19 percent over the budget adopted for the
previous two fiscal years. That 2005-2006 budget
was the one that incorporated the record, $1.4
billion tax increase. Warner, Chichester, and
other fabulists told us over and over that the tax
increase was needed to close an otherwise
unmanageable deficit.
But
the resulting $2 billion surplus shows us how
divorced from reality these arguments were.
Spending for the fiscal 2005-2006 budget could
have increased more than 11 percent without any
tax increase at all. But that wasn’t enough for
Warner, Kaine and Chichester, who wanted a truly
out-of-control state spending increase of 19
percent. That is why they increased taxes so much:
not to balance the budget but to increase increase
state spending by 19 percent rather than 11
percent.
Have
your wages increased by 19 percent over the last
two years? Probably not even close. Yet the state
thinks it is entitled to a 19 percent raise.
But
that is just the beginning. In the new budget, for
fiscal years 2007-2008, former Gov. Warner
proposed another whopping spending increase of 14
percent. But that wasn’t enough for urban
liberal Tim Kaine, who has proposed adding another
$1.6 billion in state spending, to make the total
spending increase 16.6 percent. The proposed gas
tax increase is to support that new 16.6 percent
increase in state spending. State spending in the
new budget can still increase 12 percent without
any tax increase. Even without raising taxes, the
state could devote an extra $2 billion to
transportation over the next two years, and still
increase spending on other priorities by another
$6 billion.
That
should be more than enough to provide another
healthy increase for education, with plenty of
money still left over. A state spending increase
of 35.6 percent in just 4 years, that is what
Warner, Kaine and Chichester have endorsed. How
much will your income increase over those 4 years?
Probably less than half that.
The
bottom line is that the state can’t keep
increasing spending and taxes more rapidly than
income growth, taking a larger and larger share of
the incomes of working people every year. That is
an extremist and oppressive policy.
The
state House of Delegates recognizes this, and has
passed a more-than-adequate state budget with
ample increases for transportation, and no tax
increase. Underappreciated House Appropriations
Chairman Vincent F. Callahan Jr., R-McLean, should
be commended for his good work again and again
over many years.
But
17 of 23 Senate Republicans joined every Senate
Democrat to pass the extreme $4 billion gas tax
increase 34 to 6. Based on my personal experience,
I can tell you that these putative Senate
Republicans really have no idea what they are
voting for. They have no understanding of budget
totals and trends, and are completely personally
dominated by the increasingly foggy but dogged
Sen. Chichester.
But
their votes will be remembered and they will be
held responsible sooner or later. Just ask Sen.
Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who cosponsored a
Chichester bill in 2004 to increase state taxes
more than three times as much as the liberal
Democrat Governor Mark Warner proposed. When a
Congressional seat opened up in his district, the
local Republicans gave the nomination instead to
state Del. Thelma Drake, who had opposed the 2004
tax increase. Stolle would be a member of
Congress today if he had not let Chichester
confuse him into what was actually an extremist,
nutcase position. Stolle understands none of this
to this day.
Former
State Sen. Bill Mims also cosponsored that
ridiculous Chichester tax increase bill out of
complete personal confusion. Today he is Deputy
Attorney General to Bob McConnell, with obvious
plans to run for Attorney General himself in 2009.
When he does, he can rest assured that every
Republican primary voter in the state will know he
sponsored the highest tax increase bill in the
state’s history, which would have increased
state spending by well over 20 percent compared to
the previous budget.
But
we cannot ignore the Senate Democrats, some of
whom fervently support a now established state
taxing and spending trend that, if not stopped,
will ultimately lead to 99 percent of personal
income in Virginia going to taxes. That is
the inexorable mathematical result of increasing
taxes faster than income year after year.
The
true secret of the state Democrat Party is that it
long ago abandoned representing the little guy,
and is now firmly in the pocket of Big Business.
Just look at Fairfax County where Chairman Gerald
Connolly plots with Tysons Corner big shots to
make billions for them by turning everything from
Tysons to Dulles into midtown Manhattan. He
buffaloes local, grassroots Democrats with talk of
creating “livable” communities where you can
walk from your residence (high rise apartment) to
your office (high rise office) and to shopping,
entertainment, restaurants (just like in
Manhattan).
Right
now these New Democrats are most menacing to
working people through their tax policy. They
passionately support, as absolutely essential to
social services, sharp increases in the taxes paid
by low and moderate income working people, such as
sales taxes and gas taxes. But nowhere do you see
any Democrat proposing increases for that oh-so-essential
revenue in the corporate income tax or any other
tax on big business.
What
Virginia desperately needs is a Reagan-like figure
who can tell the truth across the state about what
is happening to taxes and spending. Someone who is
not afraid to call to account John Chichester, Ken
Stolle, and the rest of the truly wretched Senate
Republican leadership, like everyone else in
Richmond seems to be.
Such
a leader is needed to run for Governor on a
platform that includes a four-year state spending
freeze to offset the runaway spending we have
suffered through the last several years. Essential
spending increases in some areas can be offset by
reductions in other areas over that time. Where to
cut? A true Republican can start by taking a huge
woodcutters axe to every item of corporate welfare
now larded into the state budget. Cut it off not
at the knees, but from the toenails up.
We
can also look to innovative Medicaid reforms that
responsible, innovative Governors in other states,
like Jeb Bush in Florida, are starting to adopt.
And how about the corporate community,
particularly the supposed Tysons Corner
progressives, stepping up to the plate and
providing some jobs in each enterprise for those
now destitute on welfare. Yes, how about throwing
in some free job training there for entry level
positions?
But
their idea of progressivism seems to be more
whopping tax increases on working people to
finance still more corporate welfare for
billionaire wannabees.
Then
there is tax policy. We need to index the pitiful
$800 state personal exemption to the federal
exemption now at $3,200. We should reduce the top
individual income tax rate from 5.75 percent to
4.75 percent. We should abolish the BPOL
(Business, Professional, and Occupational
Licensing) tax as a double tax on small business.
And, yes, to offset some of this, we need to start
looking at closing some special-interest corporate
tax loopholes. Such a leader would not only be a
much needed current of fresh air in the state’s
politics. He would be a fountain of some much
needed state party reform for both the Republicans
and the Democrats.
--
February 27, 2006
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