Damn the Coronavirus! Full Speed Ahead!

Source: Department of Planning & Budget revenue forecast. Click for more readable image.

The budget forecasts underpinning Virginia’s General Fund budgets for FY 2021 and 2022 suggests that revenues will increase 4.5% next year and 3.7% the year after that. Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne released those numbers back in December, when COVID-19 was still an obscure disease incubating in a Wuhan wet market. But it’s a very different world today. Nations are shutting down travel and enforcing social distancing. Economies are slowing. Retail sales are suffering. Economists are revising growth forecasts downward. Speculation is rampant that the global economy could enter a recession, dragging the U.S. down with it.

None of these developments appeared to make the slightest impression upon Virginia General Assembly leaders as they finalized changes to the budget submitted by Governor Ralph Northam. Read Dick Hall-Sizemore’s recap of the legislature’s budget actions here. Like junkies reaching for the needle, spending-addicted legislators paid no heed to their surroundings. They made no accommodations whatsoever for the impending epidemic.

Republican lawmakers did propose a delay in adopting the budget on the not-unreasonable grounds that the rapidly changing situation could have a big impact on revenue forecasts. Democrats responded that a delay would create unnecessary uncertainty.

As Admiral Farragut famously said, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” That dare-devil approach worked out for the Civil War commander in the Battle of Mobile Bay. We’ll see how it works out for Virginia in the Battle of the Coronavirus.

— JAB