And
the Winner is...
State
senator Russ Potts... for
his memorable portrayal as a tax-and-spend liberal
in the 2004 legislature, when he proposed $2
billion in new state spending.
Ronald
Reagan is universally given credit for having
reincarnated the conservative wing of the
Republican Party. Unfortunately, a lot of he what
he stood for is being widely ignored by a number
of current Republican office holders. This is
particularly true in the Virginia State Senate
where the tax-and-spend Republicans outnumber the
few fiscal conservative Senators by about 18 to
six.
Given
the turn of events during last year’s
legislative session, political observers have
labeled Sen. John Chichester, R-Fredericksburg, as
the leading Republican promoting increased
spending, bigger government and higher taxes.
Chichester earned this distinction by crafting a
tax bill that outbid Gov. Mark Warner’s tax
increase proposal by a factor of almost four to
one (that is about $4.0 billion for Chichester to
Warner’s $1.0 billion).
But
when it comes to new spending programs, no State senator
comes close to the bills proposed by Sen. Russ
Potts, R-Winchester. A rather contentious figure,
Potts seems to attract controversy, particularly
given his many major flip-flops on issues.
In
1997 Potts signed the Americans for Tax Reform
pledge to “oppose and vote against any and all
efforts to increase taxes.” But that was 1997
when he needed the support of the Party’s
anti-tax contingent to get elected.
Now
Potts says that in retrospect he should have
packed an eraser instead of a pen. He claims that
it was a mistake on his part to sign the pledge in
the first place. This is not an isolated flip in
positions given the many campaign promises Potts
has broken over the years.
When
Potts first campaigned for his Senate seat he also
promised that he would only stay in office for
three terms. As a matter of fact, after getting
elected he introduced bills to limit the terms of
all legislators. Now on his fourth term in office,
Potts simply writes off his earlier pledge to
having made another whopper of a mistake.
Potts
also campaigned on a pro-life platform as recently
as 2003. But in the 2004 session he voted with the
Democrats to kill a bill that would have tightened
medical regulations on abortion clinics, and
another bill that would have required minors to
get their parent’s consent before receiving
contraception medications.
Potts’
actions have enraged the pro-life contingent while
making him the newest darling of the pro-choice
movement. The Republican Pro-Choice Coalition of
Virginia even featured Potts as their keynote
speaker at their May 6, 2004 luncheon that was
held in Richmond.
According
to their press release, the goal of that event was
to make Virginians aware of the actions taken by
extreme right-wing legislators and to promote
keeping women’s reproductive healthcare
decisions outside the control of government. In
the eyes of this coalition, Potts made the perfect
speaker for their event. So much for Potts being a
pro-life, conservative legislator!
Again
in 2003 when he was being challenged by the
vice-mayor of Middleburg, Mark
Tate,
Potts campaigned on a strong pro-second amendment
platform. He even got the NRA’s endorsement
given his prior friendly votes for the gun lobby.
But
this year, he is backing legislation that is
enraging hunters. On its face, the bill (SB 952)
introduced by Potts is rather innocuous. It
purports to have the public schools teach kids
that they should treat animals humanely.
However
supporters of this bill, such as the Humane
Society of the U.S., believe that animals have
legal rights as sentient beings, that humans
aren’t animal owners but guardians, that animals
shouldn’t be killed for food, nor should they be
hunted, used in medical research laboratories or
kept in zoos.
It
is broken promises like these that make Potts an
extremely controversial character. But more
importantly, such serious flip-flops bring on a
larger degree of cynicism and aversion to
politics.
The
major whoppers in Potts’ political life are easy
to spot. What’s much harder to see is his
spending record. And on this front, Potts is a
winner—that is, if you consider spending on big
government programs a winning proposition for the
citizens of our Commonwealth.
Big
spending ticket items for new government programs
fly in the face of the core beliefs of the
Republican Party. As a matter of fact, the
Virginia Republican Party’s creed states “that
fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraints
must be exercised at all levels of government.”
This is a consistent theme of core Republican
principles as the 2004 Republican Party Platform
states “We believe that good government is based
on a system of limited taxes and spending.”
When
it comes to new spending, however, Potts’ agenda
matches the partisan, vitriolic, anti-Republican
rhetoric of the likes of Ted Kennedy and John
Kerry.
To
put things in perspective, Virginia’s approved
state budget for 2004 was set at $26.4 billion.
Against this backdrop, had all the bills proposed
during the 2004 legislative session by Potts been
approved in their totality, they would have cost
the state an additional $2.013 billion in new
spending for the 2005–2006 bi-annual budget.
Each
bill proposed by our legislators is scored by the
Office of Legislative Services as to its monetary
impact on the state budget. This information is
available on the Legislative Information System
website. The table found
here lists all the bills proposed by Potts
during the 2004 legislative session.
For
a legislator who barely beat his Republican
opponent by 106 votes in the 2003 primary, this is
a complete reversal of the promises he made during
the campaign. You see, during that race Potts
campaigned as a fiscal conservative.
It
becomes abundantly clear that in order to keep on
getting reelected, Potts has consistently made a
series of fallacious promises he knew he wasn’t
about to keep once he was safely back in office.
In this regard, Potts stands in good company with
other Republican senators that overcame their
electoral challenges by campaigning to the right
and immediately switching to the left of the
political spectrum once the votes were counted and
they were declared the winners.
Potts
should heed to the advice given by the great
communicator, Ronald Reagan, who said:
“Government can’t solve the problem.
Government is the problem.” Sadly, for Russ
Potts our state government isn’t big enough!
--
January 31, 2005
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