Between last July and July 2016, Virginia’s government will spend $96 billion, yet there are already politicians who are insisting it isn’t enough.
Walter Stosch and Terry McAuliffe are already talking about “eliminating tax relief programs” (Virginian-Pilot [1]), and while much of the focus has been on the car tax (Brian Kirwin [2] and Shaun Kenney [3] eloquently blast the attempts at its repeal), Richmond is clearly looking at anything that gets between them and more revenue.
Of course, the usual combination of Democrats and revenue-addicted Republicans will insist it’s all about “fairness” and “cleaning up the tax code.” I can even predict with confidence that Reagan himself will be unearthed to defend the latest attempt to raise taxes. Never mind that “closing loopholes” as a means of raising both revenue and economic activity at once have failed spectacularly in both the United States and Europe for decades (Greece still has yet to recover – four years later). Never mind that Reagan actually coupled removing tax discrepancies with lowering the income tax rate – thus doubling the length of the 1980s recovery. Never mind that the state budget [4] has more than doubled in just 15 years.
Now, Richmond could follow in Reagan’s footsteps and actually do some good, but his wisdom is lost on the revenue addicts; it’s all Greek to them.
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