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Virginia
Democrats are discovering what Republicans learned
when they were a minority in the General Assembly:
The political party that controls the
General Assembly must have a governing plan but
the minority party is tempted to avoid proposing
one. It’s
easier to react to, and find fault with, the
policies of the majority.
When
a minority party gives in to that temptation it
can generally expect to remain a minority party.
Voters may share the minority party’s
criticism of the party in power without believing
that the minority should control the legislature.
Unless its negative fault-finding is
accompanied by a positive governing plan that is
more attractive than the majority’s plan, voters
aren’t likely to make a change.
The
alternative plan for governing needn’t be
detailed or concrete.
There have been times when a minority party
has persuaded the electorate to turn out the party
in power on little more than an impressionistic
platform. The
key for any party hoping to be in control is to
convince voters that it actually has an idea about
how to govern.
At
the moment, Virginia Democrats are all about fault-finding.
If they have an idea or a positive policy
proposal, it has been lost in the constant stream
of attacks on Republican, particularly former GOP
Governors George Allen and James Gilmore.
Assigning
blame won’t get Virginia out of its current
budget crisis. Some
of the causes are longstanding.
The public intuitively understands that it
is more productive to debate how to address these
causes than to argue about which party can be
blamed for introducing them.
There is plenty of fault to go around.
Neither
party has shown that it is willing to do what is
obviously needed to prevent a recurrence of the
present budget crisis.
State government can’t continue doing
what it’s done for decades.
A dramatic break with the past is needed.
Having
become accustomed to painful budget crises every
decade on average, Virginians may not be satisfied
with a patch job this time.
Business as usual is unlikely to satisfy
them.
Business
as usual would be to slash agency budgets without
fundamentally changing state government’s way of
operating. Powerful
political interests accumulate around government
programs. Those
interests resist change even when it becomes clear
that the programs
are wasteful or unnecessary. They reluctantly accept occasional cuts
because they must in order to balance the state
budget. This
is why across-the-board cuts are politically
popular. No
interest group feels it suffers a disproportionate
reduction. This
response is just that — a response.
It would be better to deal with the cause
in an effort to prevent future budget crises.
The
underlying cause of these budget peaks and valleys
is not hard to identify.
Elected officials authorize too much state
spending when the economy is hot, eventually being
forced to impose harsh cutbacks or raise taxes
when the economy turns cold.
The
business cycle hasn’t been repealed.
The economy doesn’t proceed in an upward
or downward direction indefinitely.
Virginia’s principal problem is that
governors and legislators haven’t exercised
budget discipline when it most matters — when
revenues are growing and an economic downturn
isn’t foreseen.
One
way to impose discipline is to restrict revenue
projections to a long historic trend-line that
prevents excessive spending when the economy is
overheated. Basing
projections on short-term performance of the
economy has never been wise.
When
revenues are pouring in, elected officials can’t
seem to resist the pressure to spend it all.
Unless that changes, Virginians can expect
more of this kind of budget crisis.
--
August 26, 2002
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