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Gov.
Timothy M. Kaine has audacity. No doubt about it.
Just a few months after chastising his GOP opponent
in the gubernatorial campaign for even suggesting
that he would propose a tax increase for
transportation, Kaine now insists that such a tax
increase is so important and so urgently needed that
he is willing to risk a shutdown of state government
to get it.
If
Kaine considers another tax increase for
transportation that important why didn’t he go to
the voters with that message before the 2005
election? Had he done so and won, he could now argue
that he has a popular mandate to raise taxes. But
just as his predecessors Gov. Gerald L. Baliles and
Mark R. Warner pledged in their campaigns not to
raise taxes and then reversed themselves once
elected, Kaine has chosen to ignore his campaign
promises. He not only does not try to justify his
flip-flop on taxes, but has also abandoned another
campaign pledge — his promise to push growth
control legislation.
This
is more about a lack of shame than a commendable
display of political courage. Words have no fixed
meaning for Kaine. Solemn promises are made when
politically convenient, but ignored when they become
inconvenient.
The
corrosive effect of this duplicity should worry
Virginians. It undermines the integrity of the
political process and makes a mockery of elections.
The people participate in their own governance
through elections. When candidates promise one thing
and do the opposite once elected, they destroy this
vital linkage between the people and their elected
representatives.
This
budget fight isn’t about finding a compromise over
dollar amounts in the two versions. It is indeed
about important principles. As Abraham Lincoln once
remarked when urged to compromise when a principle
was at stake, we should not be searching for some
midpoint between right and wrong
What
worried many in 2004 is that at every session in
which a biennial budget must be approved, we could
expect a replay of the tactic used by former Gov.
Warner and a majority of state Senators of embedding
tax legislation in one chamber’s version of the
budget. This tactic enabled tax hike proponents in
2004 to enact a tax hike of at least $1.4 billion a
biennium that would not have been enacted as a
freestanding bill.
House
Speaker William J. Howell, R-Fredericksburg, and his
GOP House colleagues should not hesitate to unmask
Kaine and leaders in the state Senate who demand a
tax hike as the price of getting a biennial state
budget approved. Those who oppose the Senate version
of the budget should focus the debate on principles
rather than on dollars.
More
is at stake than whether additional revenues are
immediately available for transportation. The very
integrity of our governing process is being eroded
by the tactic of Kaine and those in the Senate who
are demanding a tax increase as a part of the
approval of a budget.
When
Senate Finance Chairman John H. Chichester
R-Northumberland, begins lecturing again about
finishing what the people sent legislators to
Richmond to do, Howell and his allies should respond
that the people didn’t send them to Richmond to
violate the Constitution.
The
“compromise” that Kaine and Chichester insist
that Howell pursue would involve a clear violation
of the oath of office made by each of them to uphold
the Constitution.
There
is no groundswell of support for a $1-billion-a-year
tax increase for transportation. In fact, the
Virginia Department of Transportation couldn’t
competently spend that much if it were available. My
hunch is that Kaine and Chichester have bitten off
more than they can chew this year.
--
March 20, 2006
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