Today, Gov. Bob McDonnell announced significant budget cuts. In this exclusive with Bearing Drift, McDonnell discusses his rationale on these cuts and his proposal to unfreeze the Local Composite Index.
Category: Government, Podcasts
About JR Hoeft: Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter. View author profile.
Given the costs, is it worthwhile to explore for oil and natural gas off the coast of Virginia?
Total Voters: 139
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Governor Bob McDonnell inherited a terrible problem. I am positive he above all people will do the best with what he has been given. Bob has a gift of making lemonade out of lemons.
[...] Drift has an exclusive interview with Governor Bob McDonnell on today’s budget recommendations. Share and [...]
Few voters knew that when they elected Bob McDonnell as our next Governor, the real Lt. Governor would be Grover Norquist. Norquist must be very proud of Bob. Yesterday’s budget announcement, as bad as it was for the state’s most vulnerable citizens, is not the end of it, as the hundreds of millions the Governor has cut in payments to VSRS are a mirage and further draconion cuts must be made as well. “Cut the arms and legs off of government so it can be drowned in a bath tub” is what Lt. Gov. Norquist has said. Is this enough? Heck no, this is just the beginning.
I now only work on average 17 hours a week and must survive with a 54% decrease in my salary. However I wish to help the courageous Governor Bob McDonnell and the Commonwealth of Virginia with the terrible inherited deficit in my own small way.
I pledge not to ask for a refund for the excess state taxes that I paid in 2009 but will ask that those funds be credited to my 2010 taxes.
Anyone else willing to put their money where their mouth is ????
Very kind of you James and as a personal gesture, very charitable. But the fiscal situation in Virginia is a reflection of the near collapse of the nation’s economy engineered by the laissez faire fiscal policies of the Bush Administration which simply allowed wall street and corporate greed to destroy our economy. In these fiscal emergencies, almost every economist recommends government spending to prime the pump. That is what has happened, and our economy is now out of recession and improving. In Virginia, we can’t run a deficit, and the proper way out is a combination of cuts in spending and temporary increases in taxes. That is what I support and will advocate.
Mike wants a tax increase. Like that’s news.
Social Security was supposed to be a “temporary tax increase” as well…
Yes, the difficulty of trying to have a rational discussion on this year’s budget is just like pushing on a rope. Governor Norquist’s position is ideological, not pragmatic nor practical, and the best example of that is the effect of no new taxes on our roads. Most republicans understand the nexus of prosperity to transportation, yet the ideloogy of no new taxes has led to the destruction of our roads and bridges in Virginia that frankly serves no one by an ideologue. Now that philosophy will be applied to educational and social systems as well. Virginia is on a course to the bottom, and if republicans think valuable corporations want to locate in a state on the bottom, you’re just plain wrong.
Mike, who do you want to tax? Given the track record of the GA can you guarantee that whatever money extorted from us will be used responsibly?
Any tax, fee, surcharge or whatever scheme you can think of to separate us from our money is going to hurt “the most vulnerable” which is constantly being redefined as economic conditions get worse and now includes most of the middle class and small businesses.
Freeze, cut, eliminate and consolidate… those are the only actions which will make enough of a difference to bring balance to the budget.
I think Mike is saying he wants a commercial real estate tax increase.
Sure McDonnell ran on a platform of being the jobs Governor; few knew that meant he would make cuts in the budget leading to the loss of 50,000 jobs in his first year in office. Certainly, now we have a new definition of jobs governor. Sure, Governor Norquist is dealing with the effects of a national recession. Most would not follow the ideological dictum of no new taxes, but of course for Norquist/McDonnell, there is no other choice. But there is another choice, and that is a combination of cuts and new revenue as proposed by Governor Kaine in his budget that cut deep but refused to fail the sick, the elderly, the children, and those who care for them. When ideology reigns, and when most of the Delegates have signed the Grover Norquist no tax pledge, these Delegates cannot do their duty to Virginia; they can only do their duty to Norquist. To me, to take such a pledge is to make them unfit for office.
The only other appendage sticking off the government torso that Grover didn’t mention was the head, which is the center of the failed “ideology” of the Kaine legacy.
McDonnell is taking that torso to the guillotine to lop off the head and put what’s left on Grover’s diet plan.
Mike,
What Kaine proposed was an elimination of the car tax reimbursement to localities. In place of that he proposed an income tax surcharge with the hope that localities would use the money from that surcharge to eliminate the car tax all together. That’s a nice theory, but when the localities are facing the same budget shortfalls, it seems doubtful in my mind that they are going to eliminate a source of revenue.
The surtax as proposed in HB1155 is not a temporary measure to fill the gap in this biennial budget cycle. It continues on ad infinitum. Also, the tax is just a flat 1% (0.5% in the first year) for all income levels. The only exception is if you are not required to file a return. So, if you make less than $11k ($22k for married couples), then you don’t pay this tax. But everyone else, even those who by income level would fall into the category of working poor, would still have to fork over money. Thus, I have to agree with Republicans here. Burdening folks with a tax during a weak recovery doesn’t sound like a good idea. Taking money from people who spend most of their disposable income is an especially bad idea at this time. Also, it wasn’t just Republicans who didn’t like this idea. It was unanimously voted down.
In terms of the net effect on the Virginia economy, state and local government cannot have expansionary fiscal policy. The budget has to be balanced. So either you raise taxes (contractionary) or cut spending (contractionary).
Well thanks for the lesson; that is why my proposal did not endorse Kaine’s specific proposal. From long experience with the legislature, I know they prefer to do it their way. I am under no illusions that they would pass an income tax increase, even if it was a temporary one, unless the members of the House perceive that the outrage in the citizenry is so great that it will affect their reelection chances. I frankly don’t see that happening since that is so far away, but that is what I think they should do. But I wanted them to fix transportation fifteen years ago and of course my opinion was completely ignored. Much easier to continue to promise and not perform; that is how you get elected in Virginia.