State republicans must hold ground

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: February 19, 2008

Partisan fissures crackled through Richmond last week as revenue holes continued popping open in the state budget, pushing deficit estimates from $641 million to $2 billion. Predictably, House Republicans proposed plans for the state to slash its way back to fiscal health while Senate Democrats scrambled for a way to salvage Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's pet initiatives, such as pre-kindergarten expansion and health care money for small businesses.

Kaine already had whittled spending for his pre-K expansion plan from $75 million to $32 million. Republican delegates would take that a step further and eliminate the plan altogether. They would do the same with the $7 million Kaine planned to funnel to small businesses to provide medical coverage for uninsured workers. That approach miffs Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles J. Colgan, D-Prince William, who considers the pre-K money as "really a drop in the bucket in a $75 billion spending plan."

The metaphor is particularly apropos considering that Kaine also has proposed a deeper dip into the state's $1.2-billion rainy-day fund to help cover the increased spending. Kaine last year planned to spend $261 million in rainy-day money, but upon learning that the budget gap was more than three times larger than first thought, decided to almost double the rainy-day dip.

The House would use just $220 million from that fund while cutting bonded projects and trimming raises for teachers and state workers. State grants to museums and parks would disappear.

All this has produced what has been inevitable since Democrats seized control of the Senate in November. The Senate Finance Committee divided along party lines, voting 9-7 to mostly back Kaine.

Well, of course.

Popular thinking tells us that the budget gap is primarily the product of the economic downturn. That thinking, of course, is substantively true. Remember, however, that by Kaine's own admission, overly optimistic revenue projections by his number crunchers also played a part in the deficit. The mentality of free spenders is always to expect more tax money to accompany more spending.

So it is only natural that Kaine and his Democratic cohorts would turn a $2 billion deficit into a rescue mission for their fave causes rather than view it as cause to restrain their innate urge to splurge. Pulling money from reserves should be a last-ditch act exercised, as Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol, puts it, "after we have exhausted all other options." Other options, presumably, would include not expanding programs or spending more money when the state already is knee-deep in a rising pool of red ink.

With Democrats unlikely to concede as much, a Senate-House showdown over the budget looms, particularly if Republicans in the upper chamber stand their ground. We urge them to do just that. After repeated waffling on taxes helped drive the GOP from control of the Senate, it's time for those who march under the conservative banner to show their ideological mettle and hold fast to the principles of a party built on spending discipline and common sense.