It wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. and yet we got our Quote of the Day! Sitting in House Finance Sub-Committee No. 3, which started at 7:30 in the GAB’s 5th floor conference room, cringing as Republicans killed tax credit bills with regularity (but this is nothing new; more on a later post), Delegate John O’Bannon (R-73, Henrico) was introducing HB 1318, the Taxpayer Surplus Relief Fund, which would return budget surplus dollars to those who paid them. Namely, us. Makes, sense, doesn’t? After all, you give a store $20 for something that costs $15, you get $5 back, right? If the cost of government for one year in Virginia is $37 billion (albeit about $5 billion too high), and $40 billion comes in, we should get it back. It’s pretty simple. Even states like Oregon and Minnesota have that math figured out. According to Delegate O’Bannon, Oregonians get return checks of an average of $600.
So far, so good. But then a Tax Department technocrat imagined out loud why this might not be a good idea, why it might not work or why it may never be applicable: The ceiling on The Rainy Day Fund (The Revenue Stabilization Fund, to be official), which is a surplus in and of itself, but is counted as a line item, and which is drawing interest off our money, is growing faster than the interest earned, so more General Fund money will have to be appropriated to it to keep pace.
As O’Bannon spoke up to reply, freshman Delegate Jimmie Massie (D-72, Henrico), the bill’s co-patron, instead asked to be recognized to address Mr. Technocrat’s concerns:
“Leaving excess money around in a budget to spend is like leaving alcohol in an alocholic’s cabinet. You know he’s going to drink it.”
The bill advanced to the full committee on a unanimous voice vote.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Mike Harmon
[...] Certain lawmakers do. Delegates John O’Bannon (R-73, Henrico), Jimmie Massie (R-72, Henrico) and Ben Cline (R-24, Amherst) have HB 1318, the Taxpayer Surplus Relief Fund Act, before the House Finance Committee Monday, February 4, at 8:30 a.m. This bill would prohibit the state from spending surplus tax money the next year and create a mechanism to return it to the taxpayers. There is no other situation in life where a vendor keeps over and above what you pay for the stated cost of a product or service and then spends it for what he wants. State government should be held to that very same commonsense principle. Delegate Massie pretty well summed it up here, when he made our Quote Of The Day a week ago. [...]
[...] Fund Act, passed 21-0 in the House Finance Committee this morning. It’s also where we got our Quote Of The Day, again by 9:30 a.m., and from an unlikely source: The very business, no-frills Delegate Bob Purkey, the [...]
[...] It Wasn’t Even 9:00 A.M. [...]