Virginia faces a $1.5 billion budget shortfall encompassing three fiscal years. That’s the hard bit of reality from Gov. Terry McAuliffe this morning.
The response from both sides of the political aisle: whoopee, something we can play politics with.
Sad, that the game of politics is always more important than the task at hand.
First, let’s kick Republicans in the shins.
“The governor is overly optimistic. He talked about all the businesses he’s brought. Breweries are great, but you can’t balance the budget with beer,” said House Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, playing the role of statesman.
Zing, indeed.
There’s no getting around the fact that there’s a shortfall. The issue isn’t that the economy isn’t growing, but rather, as Cox hinted above, that it’s not growing as fast as state leaders thought it would.
The idea that this is all McAuliffe’s fault is an interesting one to float. The General Assembly, with Republicans in the majority in the State Senate and supermajority in the House of Delegates, has the responsibility to formally initiate appropriations legislation, which doesn’t become law until it’s passed by both houses and then signed into law by the governor.
Which is to say, they all own it, particularly given the measurable improvement in the state economy. McAuliffe noted in his address to members of the General Assembly today that Virginia ended the 2015-2016 fiscal year on June 30 with 86,200 more jobs over the previous year, a 2.3 percent growth rate that was the best since fiscal year 2005.
Since McAuliffe took office in January 2014, more than 147,000 new jobs have been added to the state economy, with unemployment falling to 3.7 percent as of the most recent rendering, in July, down from the 5.4 percent rate that the administration inherited from its Republican predecessor.
And no, they’re not all beer jobs, and in saying that, do we need to point out the condescension coming from Cox toward the folks making things happen in the Virginia craft beer industry, which does more than a billion dollars in annual sales and employs more than 9,000 Virginians?
Beer jobs aren’t going to balance the budget, but no one sector is going to balance the budget, even the vaunted defense sector, which was hit hard in the politically-charged austerity push from congressional Republicans around the 2012 presidential election, cutting military contracts to Virginia firms by nearly $10 billion over a three-year period.
The McAuliffe years have been about picking up the pieces in the fallout of the federal sequester. The governor touted today the bipartisan effort that has resulted in 784 economic development announcements over the past 31 months bringing in $13.77 billion dollars in capital investment.
Teamwork is how you get out of a tough situation. Credit to House Appropriations Chair Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, at least, for recognizing that.
“We will begin rolling up our sleeves to find a solution. I think we are in a better position structurally, but I’m very concerned about the economy,” Jones said. “We have done the best things possible to set us in a good position. But we need to see more progress in those higher-paying jobs. Unemployment has gone down, but collections have not kept pace.”
That’s where leaders on both sides of the political aisle need to be. Not playing politics with shortfall news, as Cox is wont to do, in his biting comments about the beer industry, and then later in taking issue with a renewed call from McAuliffe in his speech to the General Assembly to take up Medicaid reform.
“One of the problems, though, is that Obamacare has caused this,” Cox said. “So then he concludes with, ‘Let’s expand Medicaid. If you look at other state’s experience with that it has been a budget buster. I thought that was particularly a down note to end on. We’re not going to do that, and we’ve been clear about that so we need to take that off the table right away.”
When all else fails, play the Obamacare card, right?
McAuliffe’s point – that Virginia has forfeited nearly $8 billion in federal funds for Medicaid expansion, choosing to leave hundreds of thousands of Virginians uninsured as the costs of the program continue to rise – is forever destined to fall on deaf ears.
That being the case, what does Medicaid expansion have to do with the budget shortfall?
Here’s where we need to kick Democrats in the shins. Because, oh, yes, politics, that’s what Medicaid expansion has to do with the budget shortfall.
Hey, folks are paying attention to us today, so why not take the opportunity to tilt at the Medicaid expansion windmill again?
The idea that pulling down temporarily-available federal dollars to expand the Medicaid rolls in the midst of a billion-dollar budget shortfall is so politically tone-deaf as to border on being ridiculous.
But this is how McAuliffe has decided to define his single gubernatorial term, on whether or not he can convince the GOP-majority General Assembly to expand Medicaid.
Because if he can do that, his legacy is set.
It’s all a game, folks, and they’re playing it with our money.
Column by Chris Graham
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