Virginia Senate Republican Caucus

My Votes on the Budget
and Senate Leadership Playing Games

About two weeks ago, the Democratic leadership of the Senate of Virginia decided that bills could die in subcommittee. The Rules of the Senate had not been amended, and no new interpretation was advanced: it's just the way things are going to be.

They killed a dozen bills in that meeting, denying the full committee the opportunity to vote on them, as has always been the Senate's policy (subcommittees make recommendations, but, until now, never had the power to kill a bill). These weren't off the wall bills, either. Every one of them passed the House with bipartisan majorities and at least sixty-one votes. Eleven had seventy or more votes, five had 87+ votes, and three actually passed the House unanimously. Yet these bills were evidently too much for the special subcommittee, which decided not to let them see the light of day. Stay tuned on this issue.

This new hardball tactic, which may be inconsistent with the Senate Rules, has garnered a lot of attention of late, and rightly so, but the budget remains everyone's top concern.

Last week, I joined nine other Senators in voting against the Senate Budget. I would like to take a few moments of your time to explain the reasons for those votes.

I imagine that most are aware of some of the ways the budget impacts education, health, and essential services, and my colleagues and I have been working hard to keep these cuts to a minimum and to restore funding to essential programs wherever possible. I outlined many of these concerns in my last email, and will not reiterate them all here, but I will note a few areas where improvements have been made since that time.

Two Sundays ago, the two money committees met in succession to consider and adopt the budget amendments recommended by their subcommittees, and the budget bills, with those amendments, went before their respective chambers.

The Senate passed a budget last week  albeit without my vote  and sent it to the House. The House, meanwhile, sent us their budget bill. Since there were inevitably significant differences between the two budgets, the budget bill then went to conference, where conferees from both chambers meet to produce a bill sent to an up-or-down (yes or no) vote in both chambers. The Senate's conferees are guided, in part, by the Senate Budget and floor action on the House budget as well as any concerns or priorities they bring to the process individually. The conferees began to meet in earnest this past Thursday.

It is certainly my hope that I will be able to vote for the budget before me at that time, but as I mentioned earlier in this email, I voted against the Senate Budget a week and I do want to provide you with the reasons for that decision.

Both chambers were confronted with very difficult choices, and I appreciate the hard work of the Senate Finance Committee, but I believe that, on the whole, the House Appropriations Committee reported a better budget  one that rejects new or increased fees, in contrast to the Senate budget, which contains in excess of $320 million in new fees, and perhaps far more, since a number of sizable fee increases do not yet have a revenue estimate.

It's a long list, with new or higher fees for vehicle registration, telephones (both cellular and land lines), court appearances, hotel amenities, drivers' license reinstatement, college courses, property and casualty insurance, wells and sewage systems, access to various records, marriage licenses, wine, and more. Sometimes it seems as if government is on an unending quest to tax every element of our lives, and the Senate budget bill does little to dispel this notion.

In addition to its reliance upon new and increased fees, the Senate budget relies heavily upon the time tested (unsuccessfully of late) strategy of inflating certain revenue estimates. In this instance, there are about $200 million of highly questionable projected revenue increases. Included in these projected revenues are increases in tobacco tax receipts and ABC profits and fewer claimed conservation tax credits. To call these projections optimistic is being kind. First, tobacco use is on a downswing and taxes have not been increased, so the estimated increase in tobacco tax revenue is a total mystery. Second, since ABC stores are now allowed to stay open 7 days a week in several jurisdictions, increased profits have been projected. Skeptics might suggest that the market for spirits will remain the same, but the sales will be spread across 7 days rather than 6 (not to mention the increased operational expenses). Third and finally, no explanation whatsoever was attached by budget writers to the anticipated windfall flowing from their belief that in each of the next two years landowners will claim $50 million less in land conservation tax credits  if they are in error, that's a $100 million hole in the budget.

Add to that an attempt to undermine the abolition of parole through the budget process and I have some real reservations about the Senate Budget. Still worse, the Senate Budget is far more reliant than its House counterpart on the assumption  the hope, really  that the state will receive a six month extension of enhanced Medicaid funding from the federal government, which is by no means a given. Both budgets make provision for the extra funding, but the Senate Budget is somewhat more free in dedicating the funding to essential programs. The House makes this money available for a second tier of priorities: if we get it, great, and if not, we'll manage. With the Senate Budget, however, we're in a far greater rut if those dollars fail to come through.

Both the House and Senate budgets made significant improvement to public education and health funding over what had been discussed in recent weeks, covered in part by additional federal funding for which Virginia qualified this past Thursday, and in larger part by a proposal by Governor McDonnell that adjust how and when the Commonwealth funds certain future pension liabilities, without changing actual compensation for existing state and local employees one iota.

I have been pleased to see significant progress made in these areas, with both budgets backfilling some of the previously planned cuts to local education and restoring Medicaid waivers for community-directed care. These community-based waivers provide a valuable alternative to institutional care for the elderly and those with disabilities  a situation that favors the elderly and those with disabilities, their families, and the taxpayers, as community-based care is significantly more cost-effective than institutional care.

Neither budget, unfortunately, reflected the sort of systematic review that I would prefer, though time constraints made a more thorough examination difficult. Nevertheless, it is vitally important that, as soon as we have the budget process and this session behind us, we pour our efforts into reviewing our budget priorities. Governor McDonnell plans to convene a government reform commission, and it is my hope that they will approach the entirety of Virginia's budget with detail and an eye to serious reform, not just cuts.

The House budget came closer to the sort of structural reform we need than did the Senate budget, and the Governor made several very good proposals on this count, but each budget proposal fell short of the sort of reform that Virginia's long-term fiscal health will require.

I certainly do not favor all the budget amendments within the House bill, any more than I would endorse all provisions of the Senate bill. I am concerned about reductions and consolidation in the cooperative extension program, which is so important to agricultural communities, and the House bill makes a number of cuts to education that I would prefer to offset elsewhere.

What finally emerges will of necessity be a compromise between competing proposals, but sometimes compromise can be a good thing, and I look forward to carefully reviewing the budget that emerges from conference committee in the coming days. For the present, I voted against the Senate Budget given my concern about new fees this budget would impose on Virginia taxpayers and to express my reservations about a number of other provisions in the bill.

It is my hope that the conferees will return with a fiscally responsible budget that I will be able to support. I will continue to keep you apprised of further action on the budget.

Mark Obenshain
Virginia State Senator

P.S. If you have not yet taken my constituent survey, please do so at www.markobenshain.com today!