Kaine throws fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraint out the window.

On Monday Governor Tim Kaine unveiled his $78 billion, two-year spending plan for state government that includes no new taxes. This is the Governor's proposed budget for the 2008/2010 biennium.

Kaine claims the plan includes no tax increases, (as long as you don’t consider a $10 increase in the fee for a driver’s licenses a tax hike), however, what concerns me is the budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending initiatives that appear to be financed by overly optimistic revenue projections and billions of dollars in new debt.

In order to pay for increased spending the governor takes money out of the state's “rainy day” fund, and raids the Transportation Trust Fund. Seems odd to have to take money out of the rainy day fund, since it is not raining, the economy is not yet in recession.

As a Northern Virginian I am disappointed that the governor takes $180 million out of Transportation funding to pay for other things. Sadly transportation as been under funded for years, and with this budget Kaine has failed to address the problem.

The early reviews have not been good. We shall see how the legislature deals with the proposal.

GOP Wins Special Election

On Tuesday, Robert Whittman won the special election to fill the 1st district seat which was vacated due to the death of four-term Rep. Jo Anne Davis.

Whittman handedly defeated Democrat Phil Forgit 62-36%. The first district runs from Tidewater up to Northern Virginia, and is considered a Republican district.

GOP drops loyalty-oath plan

In Virginia we don’t register by party, consequently anyone, even Democrats can vote in our primary elections. There are many in the GOP concerned about interference from outside the party. In order to stop what they saw as a problem the party wrote a loyalty oath. In effect saying:

"If someone wishes to participate they must sign the pledge. Please remind people that this is a statement of intent. People are free to change their minds after the primary without breaking the pledge. But to ensure that Republicans are picking the Republican nominee, we have the pledge to deter those who are voting in our process that have no plans whatsoever to support our nominee in the fall."

On Friday, however, Virginia’s Republican Party wisely decided to abandon the loyalty pledge. I for one am glad the party changed its mind. It seems to me that raiding is not a problem.

Do that many Democrats vote in our primaries? I doubt they do. Sure there may be some Democrats that raid our primaries to cause mischief, but I think their numbers are insignificant, and those that are intent on voting in our primaries aren’t going to be stopped by a loyalty pledge.

The other problem I had with the pledge is that even though it is only a statement of intent, and no one is really bound by it, I feel it is an obstacle to independent voter turnout for the Republican primaries.

We should welcome independents voting in our primaries for a couple reasons. First, we need independent votes to win General elections. Gone are the days, if there ever were such days, when we could win with just Republican votes. Independents voters participating in our primaries will help us nominate stronger candidates.

Our statewide candidates will need to win many independent votes to win in the General Election. The loyalty pledge keeps independents away from voting Republican in the primaries, and probably the general election as well.

Good riddance to the loyalty pledge.