Sic Semper Tyrannis watched the debate over the Senate transportation package on closed-circuit television and records his impressions here. Among the more interesting tidbits was this anecdote (typos corrected):
Senator Fred Quayle threw out some numbers and said that the monthly burden on a driver caused by our new gas tax would be “the cost of one Super Value meal at McDonald’s, and looking around the chamber and looking at the people I see walking down the street out here in Richmond, I think everyone can part with one McDonald’s Super-Value meal a month.”
Ha! Ha! I bet that brought a hearty chuckle.
I don’t know what a Value Meal costs these days, but for purposes of argument, let’s say it’s $4. A Value Meal each month for 12 months amounts to $48 per year. Please note, for families with two drivers that translates into $96 a a year. For families with two working couples and a teenager, that’ $124 a year. Just a drop in the bucket.
OK, The median household for Virginians in 2003 (the most recent figures available) was $54,783. So, those “Value Meals’ account to a measly two-tenths of one percent of household income.
Now, let’s turn Quayle’s logic around. Let’s propose the state lop $66 million per year off the proposed 2007 budget. A big ol’ government like the Commonwealth of Virginia would barely notice such an insignificant sum! It’s “only” 0.2 percent of proposed expenditures. Looking around at fat politicians, bureaucrats and special interests feeding off the proposed $33 billion budget Sen. Quayle would probably conclude that the state could benefit from parting with a little extra poundage. Maybe he could start by trimming back the 6.3 percent increase — well in excess of the increase in taxpayers’ wages and salaries — planned for the General Assembly in 2007.
Ha! Ha!
(Thanks to Lucy Jones to pointing out my arithmetical blunder, now corrected!)
