by Paul Goldman
I find the attacks against Senator Mark Warner on this site most hypocritically amusing. It seems you are all afraid to appropriately criticize President-elect Trump, Elon Musk, and the GOP House majority. Despite you all claiming to be such great defenders of fiscal responsibility. Let’s review some facts.
(1) Under his watch, President Trump accumulated more national G.O. debt than all previous one-term Presidents combined. He ran in 2016 saying the national debt is way too high. Then ballooned the national debt even further. Becoming the King of Debt. Despite saying as a candidate he would cut the debt. He repeated his anti-debt rhetoric this year. Let’s see how he compares to all two-term presidents by the end of this second term.
It’s not all on him of course. A bipartisan majority in both chambers has long backed all the new red ink year after year. Senator Warner included. But at least Mark is not pretending like you all on this site to be fiscal conservative Southerners. He’s voted for more deficit spending than any Senator in state history. But again: he’s not denying it. He has voted to raise the debt ceiling. You can debate the wisdom. Accumulating debt for infrastructure needs can be smart. Using debt to cover annual expenses usually dumb. But at least credit his honesty.
(2) The Continuing Resolution demanded by Trump, Musk and the Speaker suspended the debt ceiling for two years. Meaning: You on this site are happy to give President Trump and the new Congress unlimited authority to increase the national debt without first getting direct permission of either the voters or their representatives in Congress. No incoming President in the lifetime of anyone writing on this blog has ever asked for such power, much less been given it, on day one.
I thought Republicans claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility.
There are some legal scholars who believe the debt ceiling may have constitutional problems. Others say when Congress passes a budget, it implicitly authorizes whatever deficit spending is required to pay for the budget. Trump isn’t making those arguments. He simply wants a Democratic president — who he said isn’t mentally fit to be President — to sign the debt suspension so Trump can balloon the budget deficit in the next two years while folks in this site never say anything about his red ink. Trump will just say Biden allowed because Biden knew he had left a mess for Trump to fix and this is required temporarily. Yada, yada, yada.
Hopefully, President Biden and no one else will fall for this foolishness. But I suppose you can’t blame Trump and Musk for trying.
(3) As to pork barrel spending, both parties are guilty. Same for all presidents. I happen to think a president should have a line-item veto as the Governor of Virginia does. But this will require a constitutional amendment. It may be the only way to stop such spending.
(4) Let me propose a novel idea for you on Bacon’s Rebellion: There is a Virginia problem Warner has taken a lead in solving, along with several other previous former GOP governors of Virginia. You all push Governor Youngkin to join.
School buildings across the Commonwealth have fallen into a record level of this disrepair. Denying White students in rural areas, Black students an urban neighborhoods. and an increasingly diverse set of students in working-class suburban areas from having any chance at equal educational opportunity. You can’t teach a modern 21st-century education in a school building that was dysfunctional by the turn of the century. Republican governor George Allen, Republican governor of Bob McDonnell and other Republicans have agreed with me it’s time the state of Virginia plays a much bigger role in fixing this statewide problem. They have supported Warner’s efforts to have the federal government do its part too.
But now I understand that you and others support Governor Youngkin reviving the discredited car tax program of Jim Gilmore. Governor Warner took my advice and that of others in stopping the reckless Gilmore approach which was wrecking state finances. Yes, Youngkin has proposed $290 million for school facility repair. But he’s just playing politics, not coming up with a plan to fix the problem.
Bottom line: Mark Warner has long championed a public-private partnership using tax credit financing used by Donald Trump. We can adopt this financial approach to modernize public school buildings in Virginia and across the country. Without raising any local, state or federal taxes. 40,000 to 50,000 school buildings nationwide would be helped. The greatest school building program since Lincoln’s land grant college plan.,
Precisely how are we are supposed to have the functioning democracy you all on this site claim to want when huge numbers of students going to elite colleges have to take remedial courses to pass first year classes? K-12 education has fallen into disrepute. Due to the politicizing of education by politicians using it to get. No wonder political candidates just say whatever they want. We so dumbed down education that our political discourse is increasingly based on whatever facts candidates claim to be facts.
It’s easy to criticize the failure of Washington. But if we want to be fiscally responsible, we need to start putting education ahead of politically motivated car tax schemes.
Paul Goldman is former Chair of the VA Democratic Party and author of “Remaking Virginia Politics.”
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