The Democrat controlled Virginia State Senate…where commonsense, good bills, and real world solutions go to die.  Delegate Danny Marshall on Democrat Governor’s Tim Kaine’s Special Session:

The Virginia General Assembly is, by the design of our founding fathers, a “part-time” legislature. Legislative sessions in Richmond are usually handled in 45 or 60 days. The rest of the year, delegates and senators live and work among the citizens of our districts. The idea is efficiency and less state government interference in your lives.

We have just completed a “special” transportation session called by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who declared a transportation “crisis.” This session cost Virginia’s taxpayers more than $100,000. It is interesting that there was no transportation “crisis” recognized during January and February when we were putting together the state budget. Actually, during the 2008 regular session, we restored $180 million for key transportation projects that the governor had diverted to other projects.

When we reconvened, the governor’s proposals of tax and fee increases that he had presented at more than a dozen town hall meetings across the state were not even agreed to by his own party. When his original bill was brought to a floor vote in the House of Delegates, it lost 98 to 0. This was the bill that Delegate Ward Armstrong, D-Martinsville, carried for the governor.

What just happened? Why were we called to Richmond when the preliminary work had not been properly completed? The governor called the session. It was his responsibility to request that bipartisan committees work on viable solutions before the whole body was called in to vote, if indeed he was expecting a workable solution. I have never been very tolerant of wasting time and money, especially for political grandstanding.

I will be straightforward. All proposals introduced by the governor and the Democrats were to raise taxes: higher gas taxes during a time of record-high gas prices, higher taxes on auto sales during an auto industry recession, higher taxes on home purchases when the housing market is already down and a higher sales and use tax when consumers are already cutting their family budgets to make ends meet.

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