Terry McAuliffe continues to heed Gov. Bob McDonnell’s call to tour Virginia, this time by bringing his one-man show to Roanoke–which McAuliffe called the “greatest city in Virginia”. (Take that Richmond…I mean seriously, where is your Star ?)
While in the Star City, Terry McAuliffe crashed a budget session of the Roanoke City Council and teased the all-Democrat council for not supporting him during the 2009 Democratic primary. It’s good that Terry McAuliffe can laugh about his electoral troubles in 2009, however, his comments were not entirely jovial, as he added: “If you’d elected me governor you wouldn’t be worrying about revenue anymore.” More significantly, McAuliffe went on to praise the council for passing a two-cent per dollar increase to the city’s meals tax in 2010. There, in two sentences, Terry McAuliffe revealed the primary difference between Gov. McDonnell and “Gov.” McAuliffe: Gov. McDonnell, faced with a massive budget deficit, listened to the Commonwealth’s voters who, in 2009, overwhelmingly rejected tax increases, and instead balanced the budget by cutting $6 billion in unnecessary spending. “Gov.” McAuliffe, by contrast, would have attempted to balance the budget–following in the footsteps of former Governors Warner and Kaine–by proposing more massive tax increases. One need only look at the difference between Richmond and Washington to see which approach works better at both promoting job growth and fostering entrepreneurship and innovation. Virginia clearly made the correct choice in 2009; Terry McAuliffe hopes we make the wrong choice in 2013.