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Below is our interview with House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith (R-8, Salem). We submitted the questions to him via e-mail and he replied and returned them to us. Here it is in its entirety — as the questions were submitted and as his answers were written.

Familyfoundationblog: Mr. Majority Leader, thank you for agreeing to do this interview! You are the first member of the leadership of either party or chamber to agree to an interview at familyfoundationblog.com.

The House, for years, has passed, often with huge bipartisan majorities, many of our priority pro-life, pro-family bills. Thank you for your leadership and the caucus’ resolve in those matters. With that ground covered, so to speak, we thought we’d ask you about some other issues. We, and our readers, are looking forward to your answers and greatly appreciate your participation. Hope we haven’t built up expectations and the pressure. …

Familyfoundationblog: What big issue or reform would you like to see the caucus embrace and lead the General Assembly in passing? For example, SOQ reform? A taxpayer bill of rights?  Budget reform?  Real estate tax reform? Or something else entirely?

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: In the long-term, it is the budget that poses the greatest challenge for us. Simply put, some key core services are growing at an unsustainable rate. With its budget doubling over the last decade, Virginia is among the top five states for spending growth.  Unfortunately, it will probably take a strong Republican governor, one committed to thoroughly reexamining the role, size, and scope of state government before this can be successfully addressed.

Familyfoundationblog: The House Republican majority has decreased over the last few cycles. Why is the GOP losing seats and how does the caucus plan to reverse the trend?

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: Explaining why we’ve lost seats is complex, but the short answer is a combination of changing demographics in some parts of the state, the national political climate, and an inconsistent campaign operation overall.

We are preparing for an aggressive campaign to reclaim seats, and I have been concentrating my efforts on lining up strong candidates in Republican-leaning seats we do not currently hold. I am encouraged by our early work on this, and I think we’re going to have some very exciting contests this year as a result.

Familyfoundationblog: Last session Delegate Ben Cline’s (R-24, Amherst) online spending transparency bill, which would have put the budget online in a Google-like, user-friendly format, so an average Joe could look up any state expenditure, did not make it out of sub-committee. Several states have adopted such an online budget. We think budget transparency is important in general to generate public trust of government, but also to shine the sun on some nefarious groups that get state contracts, such as Planned Parenthood. What do you think the chances of passing such a bill are this session? Will it be a priority of the leadership? Most Virginians favor this and some think the GOP has ceded the issue for the Governor to carry out on his own.

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: This year, the House approved Delegate Cline’s Budget Transparency Bill (HB 2285) by a vote of 99 to 0. We have passed budget transparency measures previously (the issue has long been a priority of Senator (Walter) Stosch (R-12, Henrico), and former Delegate (Michelle) McQuigg spearheaded this effort in the House). As Chairman of the FOIA Commission, I know all-too-well that Virginia’s government needs to improve the user-friendliness of its reforms and transparency measures.

Familyfoundationblog: The Standards of Quality formula is a big concern for many Virginians because it is antiquated and either needs massive reform or needs to be scrapped and re-fashioned from scratch for a student-based, more efficient education funding system. This would save hundreds of millions of tax dollars that could be re-prioritized. Do you see an opportunity to address this at some point in the near future?

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: No. I don’t believe the prospects for any substantive government reform in any area are promising under the current administration.

Familyfoundationblog: Everyone is curious now about the leadership’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision on the regional transportation authorities. Did you agree with the decision and did you think it is a good one?

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: The Court’s decision was well-reasoned, and there were some aspects of it that did not come entirely as a surprise. For legislators, though, the decision was frustrating. The bill that left the General Assembly would have complied with the Court’s requirement that an elected body would have to impose the taxes. The Governor’s amendments changed that aspect, and it was those amendments the Court struck down.

This was not the first time that a portion of HB 3202 fell into disfavor because of the Kaine Administration’s amendments. The controversy over abusive driver fees was largely fueled by the public’s rejection that the fees applied only to Virginia drivers. This was not the case when the bill left the General Assembly. The Kaine Administration made that alteration. In that case, the change was not disclosed in the Administration’s briefing to the General Assembly on its amendments to HB 3202.

Familyfoundationblog: Are tax and fee increases the only things lawmakers are looking at? Why not make real cuts and/or prioritize tax dollars out of the General Fund toward transportation funding if it’s that much of a crisis?

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: Actually, the House passed a bill during last year’s Special Session that would do just that, dedicating the growth of current revenue stream — income from Virginia’s ports — directly to transportation. The Administration and the new Democrat Senate majority would not consider any measure that would increase the revenue flow to transportation without increasing taxes. This year, Delegates (Glenn) Oder (R-94, Newport News) and (Dave) Albo (R-42, Fairfax) have made significant improvements to that bill (HB 1579), and the House approved it by a vote of 67 to 31. But as long as the Democrat Senate majority and Governor Kaine insist on tax increases, the prospects for real progress on transportation are seriously diminished.

Familyfoundationblog: Perhaps one of the most talked about moments — and certainly one conservatives relished — of last session was on January 24, when you forced the vote on a couple dozen Democrats who refused to vote on one of their own member’s bills, a bill that would have allowed public employees to bargain collectively (see video here). You made our blog’s Quote of the Day for that! So, please take us through that:

Were you expecting the Democrats not to vote and prepared to force their vote? Or was this a spontaneous reaction? All they had to do was vote present to avoid this, right? Also, many have asked us why did you not record their vote in the affirmative to put them on record for public employee collective bargaining? What other insights can you provide our readers on this rare parliamentary event?

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: The House Rules are very specific on this. If a member is in their seat but not voting and another member points that out, their vote must be recorded in the negative. This same motion was the first rules motion I made as a second-year delegate in 1995. We were in the minority then and I wanted to learn the rules thoroughly. Now every time there is a tough vote to take, I’m on the lookout for members hiding form the vote. An abstention would have prevented the challenge.

Curiously, the Democrats got over their shyness about expressing their support for collective bargaining later in the session. We ultimately got a vote on this issue, as the Democrat majority in the Senate passed a similar measure. At that point, they went on the record, with an overwhelming number of their caucus voting for an expansion of collective bargaining.

Familyfoundationblog: Mr. Majority Leader, thank you very much for your time during this especially busy period during the General Assembly. We greatly appreciate it and hope you enjoyed answering these questions, and hope you will join us again in the future.

Majority Leader Morgan Griffith: Thank you. The Family Foundation plays a vital role during each General Assembly session, providing members with much-needed information and a well-grounded perspective on the issues that are vital to Virginia’s families. I know our members greatly appreciate the hard work you do on behalf of the families of Virginia.

One of our highest priorities this General Assembly is budget transparency —putting the state’s expenditures online in an easy to search, Google-like format (see our position here). This would allow average citizens, the media, business people, experts, academics, policy organizations, and anyone with a computer and Internet hookup to search the state’s expenditures. 

Who wins government contracts — notorious groups such as Planned Parenthood, for example? Or is the state paying for duplicate and unneeded services and wasting our hard-earned money? Within a few months of its expenditures going online, Texas found tens of millions of dollars in duplications and waste, getting into such detail as duplicate office equipment and fleet services. This should be a non-controversial issue, but as always, there is resistance by the “This is how we always do it crowd.” 

HB 2285, patroned by Delegate Ben Cline (R-24, Amherst) would put each fiscal year’s expenditures online in an easy-to-search, Google-like format. It is up for consideration in the House Science and Technology Committee and it meets this Monday at 4:00 p.m. Budget transparency is a Family Foundation priority this session of the General Assembly. While the naysayers will say it is too expensive, we secured from the Treasurer of Nebraska a letter to committee members explaining how he put his expenditures online for free! (See below.) If Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma and Mississippi can do it, Virginia, where the Internet was invented, should be able to do it too!

We urge everyone to contact members of the House Science and Technology Committee (they are in the link above) and urge them to pass HB 2285. In addition, if it is passed Monday, it will go directly to the Appropriations Sub-Committee on Technology Oversight and Government Activities (click here) for a Tuesday morning hearing. Those committee members need to be contacted as well.

Dear Virginia Legislators,

In Nebraska, I created NebraskaSpending.com by Executive Order in 2007. NebraskaSpending.com proves that putting a searchable budget database online could be done inexpensively without compromising its purpose.

For $38,000, NebraskaSpending.com includes information on state government dollars to be spent, state dollars received, investment operation pool, grants, contracts, and a breakdown of property taxes and state aid.

I heard the same arguments about the cost of a searchable database; we received an estimate of $1.1 million at one point. In the end, we were able to shine the light on Nebraska’s budget at a cost to the taxpayer of $38,000.

Taxpayers demand absolute transparency from their government. As elected officials, it is our job to deliver it in a cost effective manner. I’ve seen expensive estimates like these, but in the end government can roll up their sleeves and deliver it for far less. That’s exactly what we did in Nebraska.

As far as the $3 million fiscal impact statement attached to Virginia SB 936/HB 2285, I can’t envision a situation in which a budget site would even approach that price range. If we can do it for five figures in Nebraska, there’s no reason for anything close to seven figures in Virginia.

Sincerely,

Shane Osborn, Treasurer

    State of Nebraska

One of our most important legislative priorities this year is budget transparency. Where do state agencies spend our money? You think you know because you see a line item that says the Department of Education was appropriated X Billion Dollars? Wrong!

All we know are some top line figures. Because the Commonwealth’s budget is not in an easily searchable online database, how the agencies and departments well within the bureaucratic structure dole out wads of appropriations for grants and contracts is not easily known.

For example, if the Department of Health is appropriated $1 million to provide grants for research on physical exercise and fitness of older adults, that may well be detectable. But after that, it’s anyone’s guess as to who gets the grants. Or, if a city got some money for a park, who is doing the landscaping and is it the best bid? Simple examples, but you get the point.

So, who doesn’t want online spending transpareny? The entrenched interests who don’t want you to know where your money is getting spent. Their argument? It will cost too much money to put online, especially when we’re in a budget deficit. Okay, then, who says? The Department of Planning and Budget in one of its infamous Fiscal Impact Statements.

Last year, it said it would cost more than $1 million. This year, between $1.5-$3 million. This might seem plausible except for the fact that no state has created such a search engine for more than $300,000 and the federal government put its $2 trillion of annual spending online for $1 million. Virginia spends a “paltry” $39 billion each year. Most states have done it for free, because OMB Watch, a group that created the software for the feds, has made it available for free to states!

So today, working with the National Taxpayers Union (special thanks to Josh Culling), we secured a statement that will will distribute to the General Assembly. It comes from the Treasurer of Nebraska. He created NebraskaSpending.com by Executive Order in 2007. He proved that putting a searchable budget database online could be done inexpensively without compromising its purpose. For $38,000, NebraskaSpending.com includes information on state government dollars to be spent, state dollars received, investment operation pool, grants, contracts, and a breakdown of property taxes and state aid.

We will have much more to say about this in the coming days. For now, here is the official statement from Nebraska Treasurer Shane Osborn to the Virginia General Assembly:

“We heard the same arguments about the cost of a searchable database. We received an estimate of $1.1 million at one point. In the end, we were able to shine the light on Nebraska’s budget at a cost to the taxpayer of $38,000.

“Taxpayers demand absolute transparency from their government. As elected officials, it is our job to deliver it in a cost effective manner. I’ve seen expensive estimates like these, but in the end government can roll up their sleeves and deliver it for far less. That’s exactly what we did in Nebraska.”

Regarding the $3 million fiscal impact statement attached to Virginia SB 936 and HB 2285, Osborn said,

“I can’t envision a situation in which a budget site would even approach that price range. If we can do it for five figures in Nebraska, there’s no reason for anything close to seven figures in Virginia.”

Delegate Ben Cline’s (R-24, Amherst) online budget/budget transparency bill (HB 2285) has been referred to the House Science and Technology Committee (click here for members), which is a change from last year, where it was heard in the Appropriations Sub-Committee on Technology, Oversight and Government Activities, where it was held over for study (i.e., killed). 

It still may be referred to Appropriations, especially if a fiscal impact is attached to it (no word on that yet, though we expect one, which will hurt its chances), but this is certainly something to watch. Last year, the Department of Planning and Budget stated an online budget would cost the commonwealth $400,000, although the feds were able to put its budget online for $600,000 (for a $2 trillion annual budget vs. two-year $78 billion budget; somehow that reminds us of fuzzy math). Meanwhile, Tertium Quids debunks the cost estimates, here,  and comments on the GOP leadership’s growing support for transparency, here.

The Science and Technology Committee meets Mondays at 4:00 p.m. and its first docket does not include the transparency bill, so the earliest it could be introduced is next Monday, January 26. However, it is never too early to contact legislators. See the link above for the c0mmittee members. 

As for the Senate bill (SB 936) there still is no word on when it will get heard in the General Laws Committee (see members here). We are wary of a last minute fiscal impact statement and hearing notification, so as to give committee members a reason to kill it quietly before too much attention is given to the bill. Don’t let them get away with it. Contact those committee members (see link above), ASAP, as well. There was some good news on Friday, however: Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-27, Winchester), a committee member, signed on as a co-patron.

The General Assembly is barely under way, yet already there is urgency in the air. Most people think this session will be dominated by the budget and the revenue surplus that has been squandered, putting our state finances in a deficit. Complementing the budget debate is a very important issue and one of our very top priorities this session: Budget Transparency and Accountability, which entails putting the state budget online in an easy-to-search format.

How can we control spending when no one knows how much is spent, where it is spent and on what it is spent? Lawmakers from both chambers readily admit that unless they are on the powerful money committees, they don’t know where our money goes because after it is appropriated, it gets funneled around and through departments and agencies in forms of grants and contracts that make it virtually impossible to track. In fact, lawmakers themselves have to file several Freedom of Information Act requests just to discover the purpose of one  check.

Without an accountable, easy-to-use online tool, how can anyone track the many thousands of tax dollars the commonwealth doles out to nefarious organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, under cryptic “education” grants? How to uncover the millions of wasted tax-dollars on earmarks and political paybacks for non-essential services to special interest groups or district-friendly pork barrel projects?

Not only will an online budget — easily searchable in a Google-like format — help legislators make informed decisions on how to budget billions of your hard-earned tax dollars, it will allow hundreds of thousands of citizen watchdogs to point out the waste in government spending. In short, this is a just concept of open and good government; of sunshine; of the people having oversight of their government, as the Founders intended.

We were informed early this week that the Senate bill creating online budget accountability, SB 936, might come up as early as Wednesday, January 21, in the Senate General Laws Committee. The patrons are Senators Ken Cuccinelli (R-37, Fairfax) and Chap Peterson (D-34, Fairfax), but despite this same bipartisan support last year, the committee defeated it with bipartisan votes. Lawmakers of both parties, and their bureaucrat allies, who are more interested in the accumulation of power via the purse and the secrecy of the budget’s intricacies, are determined again this year to arrogantly deny the families and people of Virginia their rights to know what their government does with their hard-earned tax money.

However, this year, with an overspent government desperately trying to “find money to cut” and with the twin backdrops of an election year and federal bailouts to banks and businesses that have refused to account for what they’ve done with our tax money, the time is ripe for accountability in the commonwealth’s finances.

The “Google Government” bill, SB 936, may come before the Senate General Laws Committee as soon as this Wednesday, January 21. Don’t let opponents of open government kill this bill quietly, early, when few are paying attention.

It is urgent for you to write members of the Senate General Laws Committee (click here) and to find others to do so as well — all the better if one is your senator — and let them know you want the ability that the citizens of several states already have, to conveniently research how and where your money is spent. Amazingly, President-elect Barack Obama’s one major accomplishment in the U.S. Senate, was to partner with Oklahoma’s conservative Republican Tom Coburn, to put all federal contracts online.  

If the behemoth that is the federal budget can be put online, so, too, can Virginia’s.

Yesterday, we posted information about our efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and abortion in Virginia, through grants it receives through the state budget. One of the challenges we face is actually finding the expenditures. You see, there isn’t a line item in the budget that says “Planned Parenthood.” The money is distributed by local health clinics from money appropriated to the Department of Health. At least the money we know about.

An example of the difficulty in finding the truth came just last year when we sent Freedom of Information Act letters to every school board in Virginia concerning contracts with Planned Parenthood. The City of Richmond schools responded that they had no contract with Planned Parenthood but, just days later, we learned from Planned Parenthood that they were holding workshops in Richmond City Schools. Who is paying for this has yet to be determined, but we’re working on it.

Several years ago The Family Foundation introduced legislation that was an attempt at making state budget expenditures more available to citizens. The legislation, sponsored by Senator Walter Stosch (R-12, Glen Allen), resulted in Commonwealth Datapoint (click here), a Web site where one can look through every check written by the state.

But plan on spending a lot of time, because while everything is there, it is about as user-friendly as Windows Vista. 

Last year, Senators Ken Cuccinelli (R-37, Centerville) and Chap Petersen (D-34, Fairfax) and Delegate Ben Cline (R-24, Amherst) introduced legislation that would make the budget Web site more user-friendly, including a Google-like search engine. That legislation was killed in committe in both the House and Senate. Senator Edd Houck (D-17, Spotsylvania), a member of the Finance Committee, was particularly offended by the idea that taxpayers should have the right to hold him accountable for budget decisions. Similar legislation will be introduced again this year by those same legislators.

As the Commonwealth now deals with a spending surplus of at least $4 billion, finding where we can save money is extraordinarily important.  Most legislators will tell you that there isn’t much waste in state government or any more “trimming of the edges” that can be done. While it would be great to take their word for it, the fact that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Planned Parenthood gives us doubt.

The way to righting this large ship of state begins here: It cannot be done without knowing exactly where and how government spends our hard-earned money; it cannot be done if we continue to sit in darkness while extreme organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, are provided with taxpayer bailouts.

In short, online budget transparency is a just concept of open and good government; of sunshine; of the people having oversight of their government, as the Founders intended. This year’s legislative battle will be one of the bureaucrats and politicians who put power (via the purse) over the people’s right to know.

Who will win? Rather, who has the will to win?

If you haven’t been able to tell, we’ve dropped several lines over the last few weeks about the lack of budget transparency in Virginia and urging the General Assembly to pass a bill this session that will make searching through Virginia’s budget as easy as a Google search. (It’s never too early to contact your senators and delegates, click here if you don’t know who they are.)

We will continue to comment on this essential piece of good and open government, that has a broad coalition, across the political spectrum, supporting it. The only people against it are the politicians, of both parties, whose power rests largely in appropriating money, much of which the average voter would be disgusted to know they are spending.

But, for now, although a federal problem, could there be a better reason to have full disclosure of any government’s appropriations than the arrogant bank executives (see Washington Examiner, here) who refuse to reveal what they’ve done with the hundreds of billions of TARP tax dollars which have been used to bail out their sorry, mismanaged rear-ends? Just asking.

With all the talk about more transparency in the 2009 session of the General Assembly, such as House sub-committee votes going on record for the first time starting this session (see Richmond Times-Dispatch, here), and the brewing battle over putting the budget online in an easy, Google-search format, I stumbled upon an interesting element of non-transparency.

Legislative Services a couple weeks back offered a refresher course in its Lobbyist-In-A-Box Web page to G.A. lobbyists, many of whom, by the way (at my session), were agency employees, something else disturbing on an altogether different level (try government bureaucrats lobbying your legislators, with your tax dollars, to regulate and tax you more, for example). But one disturbing trend at a time.  

Lobbyist-In-A-Box is a great tool for the professional lobbyist as well as the grassroots activist, and anyone in the public can access it and use it to follow the progress of bills, who voted for what, amendments to bills, etc. The only difference between lobbyists and the general public is that with our registration, we can track unlimited bills at once; the public is limited to tracking five at once (although anyone can track as many bills at anytime individually outside of the automatically tracked five).

Coincidentally, a few days before the LIAB refresher course, a delegate asked us to come up with the amended form of HB 894, a bill last session patroned by Delegate Matt Lohr (R-26, Harrisonburg) that would have licensed abortion facilities. Although it easily passed the House with bipartisan support, it met the predictable outcome in the Senate Committee on Education and Health (aka, the Committee of Death). The amended form of the bill was offered to the committee by Delegate Lohr in an attempt to win passage by reducing the number of regulations his original bill required of abortion facilities to get a licence.

The substitute would have required less regulation than in last year’s well-publicized “puppy mill bill” which passed and was signed into law. It would have required only annual cleanliness inspections and life saving equipment. This stripped-down version of the bill was voted down 10-5 on a procedural motion on a party line vote. Sad, but not surprising the Committee of Death would give preferential treatment to dogs over women.

Now, here is where the lack of legislative transparency and the life issue intersect: When our LIAB instructor gave us a “tour” of where to find and how to track amendments and legislative history, she assured us every change to every bill is on the Web site. However, days before, when I looked for the substitute for the delegate, it was not on the site. Interest peaked, I asked the instructor if she was sure all amendments were posted. She said yes.

I asked her to look up, for the class’ edification, HB 894. I told her that Delegate Lohr had introduced a substitute but it was not posted. She tooled around the Web site and could not find it either, although another substitute, defeated on the House floor, was posted.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm. It gets curiouser and curiouser.

You see, the liberal dominated Committee of Death didn’t want to look like it was voting down an elementary bill, which would give women more protection than puppies in a breeding facility. It would rather only post the original bill so it can boast to its radical abortionist/Planned Parenthood constituency that it shot down another radical right wing, anti-woman bill; not a simple, commonsense, I-can’t-believe-that’s-not-already-law bill, where they would appear to the general public as the incredibly out-of-touch, extreme, abortion-for-any-reason-at-any-stage pols they are.

The upshot to all this? Even as the instructor said, Ed and Health can do pretty much what it wants to do, protocol or not. That’s why budget transparency and accountability, which go hand-in-hand, is crucial to the big picture. We need to know where and how much of our hard-earned tax money goes to organizations such as Planned Parenthood. It would be nice to shine the light on those in the Senate who are protecting that organization’s state-sponsored ATM, even if the Committee of Death won’t post all the information that’s fit to post.

By the way, something anyone can find with a little research that not even Ed & Health can conceal: Eight senators on the Committee of Death last session voted for the puppy mill bill in other committees, enough to send HB 894 to the Senate floor.

Let’s play “Find The HB 894 E&H Substitute:”

Click here for the bill’s tracking page and let us know if you can find Del. Lohr’s substitute submitted to the Senate Education and Health Committee on February 8, 2008.

When I appeared on Tertium Quids Radio Friday (click here) with fellow guest Nick Howard, host Norm Leahy asked us where we would make cuts to balance the in-deficit Virginia budget. I offered the observation that the deficit is about the exact size of the new spending over the previous budget’s baseline, i.e., when revenue is flat, you don’t spend more. Imagine that! (Especially when it’s people’s money).

But here are two good specific cuts, not only because they will save money, but because the principle involved is sound and just. First, all state money to Planned Parenthood must be eliminated, immediately. An organization that makes millions killing babies should not be on the government dole (see here). Regardless of what you think about abortion, if it is such a “private matter” then it should not be publicly financed.

It would save us at least $200,000 a year in Virginia. We can’t say for sure because that’s all we can find for sure. The rest is tucked away in certain nooks and crannies of state bureaucracy under grants and contracts that are not always easy to find, for various reasons.

This brings us to another, but not unrelated topic (also discussed Friday): Budget transparency. It’s not too early to bug your delegate and senator about voting for online budget legislation this coming General Assembly session so we easily find where our money goes. Simple line items for entire agencies doesn’t cut it anymore. We need to know which vendors are employed, where the grant money goes and why, and what contracts are offered and to whom.

Here’s another example, courtesy of Republican Attorney General candidate Dave Foster. Friday, he released a letter he sent to Jean Cunningham,  chairman of the Virginia State Board of Elections and all board members. 
 
First, as a matter of principle and dignity, he urged the board to count the hundreds of absentee ballots cast by Virginians serving overseas in the military. (The courts have ruled that Virginia is at fault here, but did not offer a remedy, unfortunately.) As if their votes not counting isn’t bad enough, get a load out of this:

According to Foster:

“In response to a complaint filed by the Department of Justice, the Board is refusing to count even those ballots that were filled out by Election Day. As you read this, your tax dollars are supporting the legal fees of a private law firm that is defending the Board’s refusal to count these ballots.” (Emphasis added. See full statement here.)

We don’t know the figure, but one dollar is too much. Governor Kaine (contact here) should order an immediate halt to this horrible insult to those who serve and defend our country.

There. That’s two ideas. Plus budget transparency. Plus holding back the increase over the last budget. Pretty soon, we’ll see surpluses again.

It was an honor to discuss the events of the day, discuss (and try in vain to predict the actions of) the General Asseembly, project (in equal vain) ahead to the 2009 campaign, and offer Internet Land merry Christmas wishes with host Norm Leahy and fellow guest Nick Howard this morning on Tertium Quids Radio.

Among the topics covered (hard to believe it was just 30 minutes) were the auto bailout, the state budget and its deficit, the budget transparency/online budget bill and its prospects, the Democrat gubernatorial campaign, possible tax/fee increases, Tim Kaine losing the Mark Warner playbook (line of the day cred to Nick), and our political Christmas gift requests. Mine was for a conservative leader to emerge and focus the country on the virtues of our founding principles with clarity and purpose. But there’s much more, and in a very entertaining format, so don’t use this summary as an excuse not to listen.

So it turned out pretty well, but it’s hard to screw up when in such fine company. The podcast is posted, so click here to listen to the discussion in its entirety (and to access other excellent programming on TQ Radio). We hope you take a listen and find what you hear informative and entertaining.