Common sense cut out of budget

It could have been worse.

Both houses of the General Assembly unveiled drafts of their budgets Sunday. They’re a little different, but probably not enough for anyone to go to war over. They each differ somewhat from Gov. Bob McDonnell’s belatedly revealed suggestions, but they each head in the same direction.

That’s because, like McDonnell, the legislators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are expert politicians. They know how to read election returns. Some of them don’t know much else.

And looking at last fall’s election returns, it’s pretty clear that Virginia voters are in no mood to be magnanimous. We aren’t interested in tax increases. We aren’t interested in what’s best for our state or our communities. We’re scared for our jobs, we’re worried about the economy and we want our leaders to pander to those fears.

There’s no question that cutting $400 million (the Senate), $600 million (the House) or $700 million (the governor) from K-12 public education while retaining the $950 million in car tax “relief”, which for the vast majority of people in Virginia amount to less than $1 per day, is shortsighted and selfish.

The governor and the legislators looked at the voters of Virginia and decided that yes, that’s just how shortsighted and selfish we are.

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Can this country be governed?

We the people have lost another one.

The big money boys have scuttled health care reform. The citizens of the United States will not have the same access to health care enjoyed by the citizens of every other civilized country in the world. We’re the richest, most powerful nation on earth. We can accomplish anything we set our minds to, yet we can’t do this simple thing for our people.

Why?

Because the lobbyists who keep Washington, D.C.’s money wheel turning don’t want it. So they killed it.

And they killed it in exactly the same way that they did in 1993, the malicious stirred up the ignorant with a pack of well-funded lies.

So “Obamacare” meets the same fate as “Hillarycare.”

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Hiding out in the Governor’s Mansion

There’s something odd going on in Richmond.

It’s a budget year and there’s a process the state normally goes through to reach a balanced budget.

In a gubernatorial election year that process starts with a proposal by the outgoing governor.

Gov. Tim Kaine did his part, although nobody liked his contribution. He proposed a budget with more than $2 billion in cuts and more than $1 billion in tax increases to fill a hole in the next biennial budget that may be as big as $4.4 billion.

With Republican in firm control in the House and “No Tax Increases” Bob McDonnell newly installed in the Governor’s Mansion, the tax hike was quickly disposed of.

But that’s where the process has broken down. Because the next step in the process should be budget amendments submitted by the new governor to change the old governor’s budget.

While McDonnell has submitted a few amendments to balance new spending programs he’s proposed – largely economic development measures – he has not addressed the large cuts that need to be made to balance the budget. Even if McDonnell were to accept all of Kaine’s cuts – and the new governor has said he disagrees with some, including cuts in public safety, higher education and state employee retirement contributions – he needs to make nearly $2 billion in cuts. If he restores any of Kaine’s cuts, he’ll need to make even deeper cuts.

But the governor has not submitted any budget amendments to propose those cuts.

And recent comments by his press secretary suggest that he may not.

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Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

I thought I’d give politics a rest this week.

I’m sick of the health care mess and there doesn’t seem to be any point in talking about the General Assembly until they start getting serious about what they are going to cut to make the budget balance.

So I thought I’d talk about something more personal.

Over the last several weeks I’ve been trying to quit smoking.

That’s sort of a big deal for me. I’ve smoked for nearly 40 years, since I was 12 years old. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to quit.

Well, voluntarily tired to quit. They didn’t let us smoke for the first week of basic training in the Air Force. When they finally said “Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” I inhaled the first in one long drag.

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Fools rush in

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to the news lately, there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti.

That’s big news.

And then Pat Robertson said something stupid about it.

And for some reason that was big news as well.

The details of what he said are that Haiti is cursed because its founders made a deal with the devil to free themselves from slavery to the French. But the details really aren’t important.

There was a disaster. And Pat Robertson said something stupid about it. Pat Roberson says something stupid after every disaster. How is this news?

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When ‘No Tax’ pledges come home to roost

In 2005 Bob McDonnell won an attorney generals race that went to a recount.

By the time the 2010 session of the General Assembly is over, he might want a recount of the 2009 governor’s race that he won in a landslide.

Because Virginia’s new governor faces a no win situation.

McDonnell campaigned on a pledge not to raise taxes. And he’ll honor that promise. He comes form the branch of the Republican Party that believe any tax, at any time, is evil. He’s a believer in the Gospel according to Ronald Reagan. (St. Ronnie, like my Dad, was apparently from the old “Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do school. Both as governor of California and as president, he raised taxes when he thought it was appropriate.)

So there won’t be any new revenue to plug the $3 billion hole in the state’s next budget.

And, the commission that monitors the state’s debt just informed the governor and the General Assembly that they can’t borrow any more money, either.

Actually, McDonnell and the legislature could raise the state’s debt ceiling. But that’s not exactly a conservative way to begin one’s administration. And it could put the state’s AAA bond rating at risk. McDonnell certainly doesn’t want to be the governor who lost Virginia’s AAA rating, which it has held for more than 70 years.

If you can’t raise taxes and you can’t borrow money, the only thing left is to cut the budget.

Theoretically, that’s not a bad position for a Republican governor to be in. After all, the Republicans are supposedly the party of small government. They could see this as an opportunity to scale back state government.

Except they’ve been beaten to it. Liberal Democratic Gov.

The Fix Was In

No wonder students and College of William & Mary officials never negotiated in good faith during this year’s deliberations of the Focus Group on the 3-person rule.

They knew they didn’t have to.

The fix was in.

With the exception of a few footnotes and codicils, the ordinance to expand the city’s 3-person limit on the number of unrelated persons to four wasn’t much different than the deal secretly negotiated by city staff, Mayor Jeanne Zeidler, Vice Mayor Clyde Haulman and leaders of the Student Assembly in November 2008.

The three months of work by the focus group? The multiple public hearings in front of the Planning Commission, which unanimously rejected the idea of expanding the 3-person rule in single-family homes near the college? Those were just for show. They were designed to give the appearance that council was listening to the public and to provide political cover for council and city staff to do what they’d already decided to do anyway.

In short, they were a charade.

Personally, I’d like to thank council for wasting my time for a year.

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