Sunday, June 21, 2009
McDonnell's shiny, happy conservatives
Dan Radmacher
Recent columns
- Project Vote Smart tries to educate Virginia voters
- America should listen to this Cassandra
- Endorsements are just one part of the equation
- A conversation more raucous than harmonious
From the RoundTable blog
Most Virginians look at VDOT and see an agency so fiscally emaciated that it can't even afford to keep rest areas open or medians mowed.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell looks at the Virginia Department of Transportation and sees ... flab.
He told The Washington Times that if he's elected governor, he'll seek budget cuts for the transportation agency, along with Virginia's chintzy Medicaid program.
McDonnell followed up a pledge to cut two crucial and severely underfunded programs with this bit of positive, happy nonsense:
"I'm trying during this campaign to help to rebrand our party as the party of positive, happy, friendly, conservative leadership that's pro-growth, pro-free enterprise, pro-economic development. And that's really what we stand for."
There's nothing pro-growth about starving Virginia's transportation program -- which is why the Virginia Chamber of Commerce understands the need for "dedicated, stable and permanent revenue sources" to fund transportation, even as McDonnell's party remains reflexively opposed to any solution involving tax increases.
Sadly, McDonnell believes the state GOP's problems are about image, not substance -- and mainly a reflection of the failures of the national party.
"The Republican brand at the federal level has been tarnished six out of the last eight years, or the eight years where the Bush administration had a Republican majority and yet the national debt about doubled. We did not make progress on Social Security and immigration. We had congressmen doing some bad things that landed them in prison. That is not a great brand to create for the Republican Party," McDonnell told The Washington Times.
It's certainly true that the national party has been the root cause of many of its own woes, but the state party hasn't exactly been covering itself with glory.
For instance, in Wednesday's Washington Post, state Republicans had the absolute gall to complain that Virginia was the last state to complete its application for highway funds from the federal stimulus package.
"Of everything Virginia receives in its package, the one item that would stimulate the economy is the money for transportation," Sen. Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover, told The Post. "It's difficult to understand why we would not be moving faster."
Really? Is it so difficult? Since he took office, Gov. Tim Kaine has been wrestling with the House GOP over funding for transportation. VDOT has had to slash billions of dollars in projects as its funding has, as predicted, dried up.
In recent months, VDOT has only had money enough for routine maintenance, not new construction. As Bob Chase, executive director of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, told The Post, "This delay is [due] in part, to a large degree, that Virginia is failing to adequately fund transportation."
The NVTA, it should be noted, is supported by businesses in that region that I assume consider themselves "pro-growth."
Virginia has long prided itself on being a well-run state, and, until recently, it did so with good reason. VDOT, especially, had become a model of efficiency and budgetary transparency before the GOP's refusal to act on transportation funding practically starved the agency to death.
The rest of state government, with a few notable exceptions, gave Virginians reason to be proud. Taxes were low. State government was lean -- too lean, if how we took care of Medicaid recipients and the mentally ill is any indication.
But the GOP's singular focus on cutting taxes and resisting any revenue increases has combined with the impact of a nationwide recession to put Virginia on the edge of fiscal insanity.
That McDonnell can look at a budget that has absorbed billions of dollars in cuts due to the recession and spout the same tired lines about government waste is incredible, and hardly a recipe for rebranding the state Republican Party.
The people of Virginia seem to be catching on to the fact that, even in state government, you get what you pay for.
McDonnell and his running mates may believe that they can turn around their party's lengthening losing streak (two governors, two U.S. senators, several U.S. representatives, control of the Senate and several seats in the House of Delegates) by continuing to spout the same worn ideology in the face of contrary facts.
I have a feeling that singling out VDOT for further cuts will demonstrate to Virginia just how blind, and futile, that ideology is.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
