With the nation’s best business climate, Virginia is in a better position than other states to weather the economic storm, said Patrick O. Gottschalk, secretary of commerce and trade, over the weekend at a small business awards ceremony in Manassas.
I love Pat. He’s an old friend of mine and a wonderful guy, and he’s done a solid job as secretary of economic development. But he’s also a team player, and he’s touting the party line. While I agree that Virginia is well positioned to attract new business, we’ll be fighting more than a general economic downturn in the years ahead: We’ll be contending with the biggest cuts in defense spending since the early Clinton administration.
True, Virginia has won the best-state-for-business honors from Forbes magazine for the third year in a row, as Gottschalk noted and was duly reported by the Washington Post. That’s Virginia’s ace in the hole. Unfortunately, Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts’ fourth district congressman and one of the most senior and influential memebrs of Congress, is holding a royal straight flush.
Frank, riding high in what’s shaping up to be a near filibuster-proof Democratic majority in Congress and the most liberal Democratic president ever elected in American history, will have a lot to say about U.S. spending priorities.
Here’s what he told the editorial board of one of his home-town newspapers, the Standard-Times in New Bedford. As the newspaper wrote, he “called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs.”
I’m not arguing about the rightness of wrongness of Frank’s priorities. The Pentagon, like the rest of the federal government, needs to make tough choices and cut spending. I’m simply noting that for the past eight years, Virginia — Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads especially — have had enjoyed huge increases in military spending. In the next four to eight years, those regions will be contending with military spending moving in reverse. Frank may not get his 25 percent cuts. But what if he gets 10 percent cuts? It won’t be a pretty picture.
To think that the Pentagon-fueled prosperity that Virginia has enjoyed since 9/11 will continue indefinitely is a hookah dream. To fail to prepare for it is folly.
