While in Richmond on Wednesday, I had the opportunity to speak with several Senate Republicans about the state of the budget in the Senate and one word kept coming up – “ugly.”
The bottom-line is that Senate Democrats are in complete disarray over years of mismanagement and a mindset of “going along to get along.”
“Senate Republicans have said for the last three years, ‘Beware of falling revenues; beware of Governor Kaine’s falling revenue estimates and Senate Democrats always took Governor Kaine’s revenue estimates and never questioned it,” said State Sen. William Wampler, a senior Republican member of the Senate Finance committee. “Senate Republicans chose to examine the underlying assumptions because what we saw, particularly in ’08, was the sub-prime rate starting to rear its ugly head, Northern Virginia’s economy starting to go into the tank (particularly the real estate market), car dealers were telling us that they were not selling any cars; so, let’s put it this way, out of the top ten economic indicators, we couldn’t find one that was positive.”
Wampler explained that normally legislative bodies accept what the executive branch tells them regarding revenue projections, but what they saw coming from Kaine was so flawed that Republicans took the unprecedented step of breaking from the majority in both the Finance Committee and on the floor.
“Unfortunately, the chickens have come home to roost,” Wampler continued with respect to today’s budget. “It’s not pleasant to cut $4.5 billion from the budget, but the simple fact is that you can only spend what you have and you should only spend that which you have.”
So where does that leave us?
Well, as we saw on Wednesday, the governor has proposed a list of spending cuts that he expects the General Assembly to debate and take action on.
The House appears to be united behind the governor’s proposals, and has a budget that we will hear about during a conference call on Sunday.
However, even as late as Wednesday, the word from several senators that I spoke to is that Senate Democrats still cannot agree as to what combination of taxes and cuts they should put into their budget.
As we saw in the inane Washington Post article written the other day, Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple was sniveling that Senate Democrats didn’t have a budget proposal from Gov. Bob McDonnell – this despite the Senate Democratic majority voting AGAINST the same bipartisan Wilder Commission plan to move budget submissions to even years (ensuring that the incoming governor submits their budget and doesn’t have to hack on their predecessor’s).
What she does have to work with is former Gov. Tim Kaine’s budget, which foisted a $1 billion tax increase on Virginia families in the middle of a recession – which was unanimously rejected in the House of Delegates (not a single delegate voted for it).
So how come Senate Democrats can’t figure out how to put together a budget plan? Have they become so lazy and reliant these past eight years on the executive branch to carry their water that they are totally inept at even cobbling together a budget BASED on what a governor from their own party put together as recent as two months ago?
Likely. And it appears that the only thing they can do at this point is disagree with one another as they fail to even generate enough support within their own caucus for proposals, let alone reach out to the ideas of their Republican colleagues.
So what are the sticky issues?
Obviously, taxes and the reinstatement of the dreadful “Car Tax.” Additionally, Democrats can’t agree on the Local Composite Index (Sen. Yvonne Miller and Sen. Louise Lucas from here in Hampton Roads will lose millions of dollars to Northern Virginia districts), cuts to higher education, the elimination of Pre-K (if you have to cut from K-12, why on earth would you be funding a new program?), the Virginia Retirement System (structure or deferring contributions – which was a subject of a joint briefing yesterday), among others.
Senator Wampler doesn’t see much progress with the Democrats right now and is playing the waiting game along with the rest of us.
“We can’t get the pot to boil right now, so I don’t even know what we’re gonna throw in it to see what kind of soup this thing is gonna taste like,” he said. “The Democrats have to decide what their critical mass is because they’re still struggling. When we ask for a concession on Pre-K, they say ‘absolutely not’. It’s very difficult right now.”
