The LiberalMSM (oneword) Daily Press (Feb 23,2006) on The Peninsula notes Del Waldrup (R- Va Beach) had a blog meeting on transportation. Catch how they say…
Waldrup “gathered with a collection of Internet acolytes on Tuesday night, saying on a Web blog, “the press doesn’t want to do their homework. Show me the money they say. They haven’t reported on a ton of legislation that is new and different. They just sit back and say that the House is paving the roads with school books, but what about all these increased revenues that we have accumulated from the surplus over the last two years?” Too bad they didn’t cite the blog addresses to let readers read all for themselves.
Then, the DP gave the first explanation I’ve seen for the buzzwords – sustainable, reliable, dedicated, permanent – revenues.
Apparently, dear Acolytes, they’re against borrowing money with bonds to pay for roads today. That’s odd. When we had the VA ballot referendum for huge bonds for the environment and higher education – they were all for those bonds. Also, they were terrified that VA would lose its AAA bond rating to keep borrowing – unless VA raised taxes in 04. Except, the report actually said VA could raise ONLY $800m in NEW bonds unless it spent less or raised more money.
The real rub is that the taxaholics (D and R) don’t want to use General Funds for Transportation. Ah, that is why we have the Transportation Trust Fund – the one regularly raided for General spending by Republicans and Democrats.
So, get this, using money from the General Fund or from the surplus in the General Fund or from bonds is wrong. The DP quotes His Lordship Sir John Chichester’s insight, “By its very definition, a surplus is inherently unpredictable and unreliable. We concluded this is not how we want to fund transportation in Virginia.”
Like the money for the General Fund, Transportation Fund, any bond issues and any other colored pot of money in Virginia Treasury comes from some sources that are subject to the economy going up and down and some that are not. LOL.
Earth to DP and Taxaholics: All revenues come from the economic health of the Commonwealth. If the economy goes down, revenues go down. If the economy goes up, revenues go up.
Let’s try it another way. If VA planned on spending $70b, but revenues after the Chicken-Little-the-Infrastructure-Is-Falling Tax hike, Bush’s tax cuts and massive Federal spending in VA – are $72b, then the $2b is a surplus. If the economy is expanding and the Gov and GA spend only $71b and taxes come in at $73b there will be another $2b ‘surplus’ the taxaholics can spend on anything – including transportation. It will continue that way IF spending dies NOT grow faster than inflation.
When the economy went down during the Clinton/9-11 recession of 00-02, the revenues flattened but still increased from $48 to $50b (or was it 50 to 52?) in VA because not every sector of the economy contracted – and not every household.
So, if our $72b revenues stayed flat at $72b for two years – if (IF almighty IF) the Gov and GA didn’t increase spending in other areas – the same money that was spent on transportation in one year would be available in the next – if they didn’t spend it on something else!
The business staff of the DP must be different from the editorial staff or they couldn’t make a profit. EC 201: The government gets its revenue from the same economy The People get their revenue from. The government gets their money from The People – including corporate taxes.
The distinction between these ‘sustainable, reliable, dedicated, permanent’ taxes for transportation and the ‘sustainable, reliable, dedicated, permanent ‘ of the 1985 transportation tax hike which would fix transportation forever is that these taxes are just new and additional taxes for 2006.
Last lesson from EC 201 (Department of Social Sciences, USMA)(or EC 10 at Harvard) is that every $150m in taxes kills 5000 jobs. The first to go are part time and minimum wage earners – the working poor.
Where is Jim Miller when we really need him?
