Patrick McSweeney


 

GOP Gotterdammerung


Republican leaders have forgotten the principles of limited government that propelled them to power in the General Assembly. We may be witnessing the twilight of their rule.


 

The Republican Party in Virginia soon could soon collapse into anarchy and discord like the gods of Valhalla in their final days. Republicans earned their majority status by consistent advocacy of conservative principles, including limited government, low taxes and disciplined spending. Some elected GOP officials now are touting a new and different philosophy.

 

The GOP-controlled state Senate has tripled Gov. Mark R. Warner’s opening bid to raise taxes by $1 billion. The House of Delegates, which is also dominated by Republicans, has so far resisted a huge tax hike. Whether the Republican Party continues to earn the support of Virginia voters depends on which camp within the party prevails in the current fight over taxes and spending. The outcome is very much in doubt.

 

Sen. John Chichester, R-Stafford, has come to personify the Senate position in this fight. Speaker William Howell is seen as the embodiment of an anti-tax sentiment in the House.

 

The Chichester camp is working not only with Gov. Warner but with the business and education elites who for years have favored big spending increases and huge tax hikes to fund them. The Howell camp has its own powerful allies, including the Republican rank-and-file.

 

While Warner and Chichester have pursued clear strategies, the House leadership has yet to do the same. As the fight moves to its next phase — a showdown in the conference committee that will try to reach agreement on a budget for the next two years — the House must be at least as focused as the Senate.

 

Warner and Chichester obviously think the House will cave in. After all, the House leadership has already departed from its initial opposition to any net increase in taxes by eliminating several sales tax exemptions.  Some in the Chichester camp now openly ridicule the negotiating approach of the House leadership.

Meanwhile, Warner heightened the pressure on the Howell camp by threatening to use his veto power or his prerogative to hold legislators in Richmond until they agree to a “responsible” fiscal course, namely, acceptance of a huge tax increase.

 

What is dismaying to many is that the Howell camp has not shifted the debate away from which taxes to raise to what spending to cut. The public has long assumed that government wastes money. The pro-tax forces have yet to be challenged on the central proposition of their campaign: Virginia can’t afford to cut any more than it already has.

 

The governor himself claimed that at least $1 billion in cuts remained to be made after the budget was reduced by $6 billion during the first two years of his term. Those cuts could come from implementation of the Wilder Commission recommendations and wouldn’t impair the state’s vital services. Warner should explain what happened to that $1 billion opportunity.

 

There are many other opportunities to eliminate wasteful spending. Why, for example, should we have a Secretary of Technology and a new Director of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency? Why should we be spending tens of millions of dollars on an underground visitors center at the Capitol? Why do we allow public universities to complain about low faculty salaries when some pay secretaries and administrative assistants more than department heads?

 

Until the notion is dispelled that vital services will be cut back without a huge tax increase, the Howell camp is doomed to lose. If that happens, the principal appeal of the Republican Party in Virginia will disappear and it will return to minority status.
 

-- March 1, 2004

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact Information

 

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11 South Twelfth Street
Richmond, VA 23219
(804) 783-6802

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