Clucking for Transportation Taxes
As of today, there is no transportation funding shortfall.
You read that right. There is no crisis. There is no reason to act like Chicken Little.
The sky is in fact not falling.
Wait, you might think. Every article I’ve read on this says there’s a shortfall. What is this Virtuconer talking about?
Well, I would like to invite any and all readers of this blog to take a few minutes and put in a call to the folks over at the GAB in charge of the budget. They will tell you exactly what they told me: the so-called shortfall in transportation funding is only a real and true shortfall if you take 2007’s slumping economy and tax revenue and estimate it to be the same for every year over the next 6 years.
In other words, if you buy the premise that our current economic difficulties will last over the next six years, then yes we have a shortfall. If, as most economists believe, the economy improves and tax revenue increases, there is likely not to be a shortfall at all.
So, if there’s no problem, there’s no need for a round of new taxes and fees. The Democrat Governor Kaine ought to be straight with people about this.
Filed under: Conspiracy Theories, Democrats, General Assembly, Taxes, Virginia General Assembly, Virginia Politics
Indeed. I called the tax plans as the Transportation Tax Scam of 02, the Chicken Little Tax Hike of 04 and the Transportation Tax Panic of 07.
I prefer to consider the emerging D and R plans as the Stuck on Stupid Tax Hikes of 08.