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virginianewssource.com Senate Republican
Leadership Leaves the Party by Peter Ferrara An extraordinary event in Virginia politics occurred on Tuesday, February 17. Senate Majority Leader Walter Stosch, and Republican Whip Ken Stolle came to a meeting of the Republican state central committee, which I attended, to explain why the entire Senate Republican leadership has co-sponsored the largest tax increase in the history of Virginia. Their bill would raise taxes by a net $3.7 billion over the next two years, over 3 times what Democrat Governor Mark Warner has proposed. It would raise sales taxes by 22%, general income tax rates by 10%-15%, the gas tax by 20%, and the cigarette tax by 1000% (that's not a typo). At the meeting, Stolle did the talking. Effectively, he told the Republican governing committee that the era of Big Government is back. For more than half an hour, he went over a litany of state government programs he insisted must be increased more and more. From 1998 to 2001, just 3 years, state spending in Virginia rose by one-third, with spending from the general fund increasing by 41%. But Stolle defended those runaway increases as desirable, taunting the crowd to tell him what they would have cut out of the increases. Like the rest of the campaign for the tax increases, Stolle's talk was basically a long recital of fish story whoppers. He started his talk by saying that the House Republicans had come to the same conclusion as the Senate about the need to raise taxes. But the Senate's tax increase is 5 times larger than the House increase, which at least is focused on Big Business interests who have been fighting viciously for higher taxes for years. Stolle also remarkably told the assembled Republicans that former Governor Jim Gilmore had come to the same conclusion. This was just one day after the Washington Post ran an op-ed by Gilmore opposing the tax increases. Stolle also recounted the whopper about how state spending has already been cut by $6 billion. Besides the enormous increases from 1998 to 2001, state spending has increased since 2001 by another 11.6%. So there have been no cuts. Stolle and his new liberal special interest pals wanted to increase state spending by another $6 billion in the past couple of years, but thankfully they didn't have the money for that. That is what the proposed record tax increases are really all about. They are not needed to close any budget deficits. The current budget, with the highest level of spending in state history, is in surplus. The tax increase is to satisfy the special interests who just want to increase state spending even faster. The Governor's own budget report shows that state spending can increase 11% in the new budget without any tax increase. But that is not enough for the big spending liberals. The Governor's proposed tax increase would finance a 13% increase in state spending. The whopping tax increase proposed by the far left, extremist, Republican Senate leadership would increase state spending by 16%. Working people in Virginia are not getting wage increases of 16%, or 13%, or even 11%. So how can the government demand more from them' Stolle argued that it is somehow unfair to look at total state spending. About half of the budget is financed by non-general fund revenues that are dedicated for specific purposes and cannot be redirected to other programs. These include gas taxes, fees for services such as car registration, and federal funds. Stolle wants voters to look only at the spending from the general funds, which include primarily state revenues from sales and income taxes. But for taxpayers this distinction makes no sense. All of the state's revenues, general and non-general, come out of the taxpayers' pockets. The same Virginia taxpayers pay gas taxes, state fees, and even Federal taxes, as pay state income and sales taxes. Indeed, the Senate tax increase proposal raises both general fund and non-general fund taxes. But even looking just at the state general fund, the tax increases are unjustified. General fund revenues are up 5.6% this year from last year. Moreover, without any tax increase, general fund revenues would still be up another $1.8 billion in the new budget, an increase of about 7.5%. Former Democrat Governor Doug Wilder was much better for taxpayers than the current liberal left Senate Republican leadership. He faced real budget deficits in the early 1990s, due to the poor economy then. But he responded by just holding spending growth down, with no significant tax increases. The result was that for the rest of the decade Virginia enjoyed one of the fastest growing economies in the entire country. The Republican state central committee was uniformly negative regarding Stolle's presentation, though polite, perhaps excessively so. But that will be irrelevant if anything like the Senate Republican tax increase passes. The Republicans will then have lost the tax issue for many years. With that will go their Assembly majorities and state level offices for many years as well. The Senate Republican leaders, however, could care less about that. They think their own seats are irrevocably safe, and they have effectively already left the party. |
