Warner Leads, VA Legislature Follows

[Freddie Stubbs]

DLC | New Dem Daily | April 28, 2004

Yesterday, after an excruciating 105-day battle, the Virginia legislature approved a package of tax measures aimed at avoiding a fiscal meltdown while giving low-income taxpayers a bit of a break. It was an astounding political victory for New Democrat Gov. Mark Warner, whose original tax proposals (which the final package followed in broad outline) were widely expected to go nowhere in the GOP-controlled House and Senate.

The odds against this outcome were truly daunting. Warner's Republican predecessor, Jim Gilmore, couldn't get a budget through the Virginia legislature in his last year in office. Virginia House Speaker William Howell repeatedly vowed to stop any measures that raised taxes on anybody. Likely 2005 Republican gubernatorial nominee Jerry Kilgore, U.S. Sen. (and former Gov.) George Allen, and much of the state GOP party apparatus opposed any agreement on taxes, cynically calculating that voters would blame Warner and Democrats for the education and transportation cutbacks -- and a certain downgrading of the Commonwealth's credit rating -- which a stalemate on revenues would have produced. Moreover, virtually every conservative and anti-tax organization in America spent much of the last three months threatening political vengeance against any Republican legislator who dared to place Virginia's fiscal health above anti-tax ideology.

more: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=192&contentid=252550

[jwalk1230]

1. Go VA Dems!

Mad props to Mark Warner! Finally sense fiscal sense in VA--and it came from those fiscally upright Democrats, not those loony "don't tax and keep spending" Republicans. A premonition of things to come at the federal level?

Way to go, Guv Mark!

[newyawker99]

3. Hi jwalk1230!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Progressive420]

2. Go Governor WARNER!

its about time we got the budget past i know my delegate benny keister was really working hard to have the budget past and all i have to say is its ABOUT TIME!!!