Governor McDonnell announced today that the FY10 surplus was actually $400 million-plus. He then announced that all but $71 million was already spoken for (Washington Post).
That aside, there is still the question of the $71 million. The Governor is waiting until late fall to determine its fate.
I have four suggestions:
1) Kill the manufacturer’s tax: Initially, the General Assembly was planning to wipe out a tax deduction for manufacturing. In the end it was shaved by a third, but that’s still a tax increase. Eliminating the entire deduction was supposed to bring in $30 million, so we’re looking at a ten million loss to Richmond’s coffers.
2) Decelerate sales tax collection now instead of later: As was noted during the first surplus celebration, the revenue effect of the accelerated sales tax was nominal. Deceleration is supposed to come in 2013. Why wait?
3) Restore the vacant judgeships: The last FY11 figures I saw on the savings from leaving the vacancies as such was $6.5 million.
4) Put the rest into closing the VRS gap: McDonnell himself noted that he would take every opportunty to accelerate the payback of the skipped $620 million to the retirement system. No time like the present, I say.
Wow. What bad ideas. Tax credits =/= tax cuts; rather they are stealth subsidies. So no. Better than any of these ideas would be off some public debt.
It’s NOT a SURPLUS when you achieved it by deferring the 620 million to start with.
this is what gives Republicans a bad name.
We EXPECT this kind of flim flam stuff from the tax & spenders.. an we USED to DEPEND on the Republicans to be the grown up with budgets.
I have a hard time seeing this as fiscally conservative leadership but rather no better than what Kaine was accused of.
geeze….
Aw, fellas, admit it. You missed me.
OK, Larry; you have a point on the VRS thing, that’s why I said we should pay it back more quickly. I’ll call that “violent agreement” and move on.
Cyto, this isn’t a tax credit; it’s a tax deduction. Not the same thing.
[...] Wrote D. J. McGuire in The Right Wing Liberal yesterday about “a $71.2 million discretionary balance in the general fund as of June 30, 2010″ – - “Put the rest into closing the VRS [Viginia Retirement System] gap: McDonnell himself noted that he would take every opportunity to accelerate the payback of the skipped $620 million to the retirement system. No time like the present, I say.” (Underscoring Forum’s.) [...]
@Larry: DJ is still in denial concerning the fact that the two major parties are really two parts of a big government whole.
@DJ: Okay, it’s still an unnecessary distortion.
OK, Cyto, tell me what we’re supposed to do down here; then tell me why it hasn’t worked in your country, or your province (need I remind you what Unsteady Eddie is calling “Conservative” these days?).
I ran as a Republican, and my local paper practically accused me of being a militia member. So am I an 18th century throwback or a big-government lackie?
Make up your minds and call me when you’ve cured your MPD.
Instead I’ll tell you what worked here and would work down there: cut spending, pay down debt, and THEN cut income (not sales) taxes. Our federal Liberals did a fantastic job on this front in the ’90s.
Your paper is hysterical. How this contradicts the fact the GOP is usually complicit in government expansion, I have no idea.
Yes, and I remember how grateful the Grits were to the fellow who made it happen: they knifed him in the back and still treat him worse than Brian Mulroney.
That’s not meant as a defense of Mulroney, BTW.
I mention the paper to show what happens when someonw actually tries to talk about cutting spending. I’ll admit the GOP has had its problems (especially in Virginia), but the options are either to fix the party or give up. You can’t create parties out of whole cloth like the Alberta Wildrose Alliance down here.
You’re talking about Paul Martin, right? (Chretien was just an albatross for that guy).
Okay, that paper would freak out on you even if you committed to no spending cuts. It doesn’t matter because you’re on the wrong team.
I want to believe the Tea Party will seriously fix the GOP, but I have a feeling that once Team Red gets back in power, concerns about government overspending will fade for about 3/4 of the TPers in a week. Once that happens, your options are to make a new party or give up. Because you can cut parties out of whole cloth, it just takes a lot of voter anger.
Martin? Are you kidding me? As PM, he revealed his true big-spending colors. Chretien will never get the respect he deserves (and I don’t really like him).
This is wrong. Finance Minister Martin did all of the pushing for a balanced budget. As PM, he was pretty bad with the spending but most of the time he was PM he was in minority supported by the NDP. Harper’s been worse yet.
[...] forgot to mention the angry reaction from expected places. McDonnell is already smarting over the manufacturer’s tax and the accelerated sales tax (to name a few) from within his own party – to say nothing of the 1.1 million Virginians who [...]
[...] Deeds forgot to mention the angry reaction from expected places. McDonnell is already smarting over the manufacturer’s tax and the accelerated sales tax (to name a few) from within his own party – to say nothing of the 1.1 million Virginians who [...]