The Kilgore crew is finally talking tough on taxes. Citing this year’s Incredible Expanding Budget Surplus, now running 15.2 percent ahead of last year and 4.9 percent ahead of forecast, the Kilgore campaign criticized the 2004 tax increase, arguing that economic growth would have provided the state the money it needed for expanded services. Reported The Washington Post Friday:
“Jerry Kilgore was out front saying the economic growth that Virginia was experiencing would lead to greater revenue. The numbers we see certainly bear that out,” said Kilgore spokesman J. Tucker Martin. “Jerry Kilgore fully believes that the way you grow an economy is by letting people keep more of their hard-earned money. You don’t grow an economy by taking money from people’s wallets and putting it into state coffers.”
I don’t recall Kilgore being particularly “out front” in the fight against the tax increase a year and a half ago. But if he’s claiming he was, I’m happy to hear it. Let him pick up the low-tax banner. Meanwhile, Tim Kaine, who backed last year’s tax increase, finds himself on the defensive.
“If Jerry Kilgore has his way, we’d still be operating under deficit spending, we’d never have gotten our fiscal house back in order and we’d be struggling to fully fund” education, said Kaine’s director of communications, Mo Elleithee. “I’m not sure I want to take a lecture from Jerry Kilgore on fiscal responsibility.”
Mo, you’re dreaming. How big a surplus does it take for you to recognize that the tax increase was not necessary?
So, what is the spin coming out of the Warner administration these days? “I know there’s going to be a lot of second-guessing,” Secretary of Finance John Bennett said in a presentation to the Senate Finance Committee. “That just goes with the territory.”
Second guessing? Nice try. How about, “I told you so.” How about, “We predicted it, and you ignored us!” Some of us have argued all along that the tax increases were unnecessary, that expanded programs could be funded through economic growth, and that if revenue is at some point in the future inadequate, you raise taxes then, when you’re staring a deficit in the face, not now, based on the fear that deficits might occur one day. C’mon, suck it up and admit it. You blew it! Raising taxes was the biggest mistake of the Warner administration, and it’s going to come back to haunt you.