By Steve Haner
A senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee just called the Governor of Virginia a spoiled brat, which of course became a headline. Is everybody getting the nonsense out of their systems? It is time for the grown-ups to intervene or we will be stuck in a stupid loop until July.
The state budget as it passed a few weeks ago will not stand. Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) will either impose line-item vetoes that drastically reduce the available revenue, or he will veto the entire $188 billion document. He has sufficient votes behind him to sustain those vetoes.
That Governor Youngkin would never accept an expansion of the sales tax to digital items on its own, without compensating tax reductions of some sort, has been obvious throughout this process. Democrats knew that. Expanding the tax to cover a host of business-to-business transactions, as well, was an intentional act of political arson by the Democrats. They knew all along it would never stand. They are begging for a veto for reasons hard to fathom.
Think back just one year, just one single year. Can anybody imagine Fairfax Democrats Richard Saslaw or Janet Howell building their budget on a tax proposal that has the Northern Virginia technology industry on the warpath? Can you see them proudly touting an effort to, as I put it earlier, kill the digital goose for its golden egg? These are not only not our fathers’ Democrats; these are not 2023’s Democrats. Continue reading