Now that we know — as if we needed confirmation — that Governor Tim Kaine will outline a tax increase for his transportation plan come Monday, it puts a certain former governor with a, shall we say, shady history on the issue of taxes, in a bit of a bind.
Will former Governor Mark Warner embrace the plan? If he does, it will explode his already gaping tax credentials hole into a crater. If he doesn’t, he gives the low-tax General Assembly Republicans all sorts of cover and undermines his hand-picked successor. What will it be: His natural appetite for taking away hard-earned money from Virginia’s families? Or, will will he throw his pal, in what seems to be the trend this Democrat political season, under the bus? Most likely, he’ll use the time-tested political dodge. But he won’t get away with it.
Look at his record of broken promises and reversals of position, which is piling up faster than dead bodies during whack frenzy last-season of The Soprano’s:
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Promise: Finish the car tax elimination. Result: Didn’t even try.
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Promise: End the death tax. Result: Vetoed it.
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Promise: No tax increase. Result: Largest tax increase in Virginia history despite a surplus.
Which brings about another question: Since we didn’t get into the “transportation crisis” overnight, who didn’t get the job done before Governor Kaine? I mean, who was the governor between 2002-2006? Oh yeah, the same Mark Warner who wants raise our federal taxes as well (after months of denying it, he went on record yesterday saying he wants to let the Bush tax cuts expire).
Not that these are tax issues, but adding to the skepticism of his veracity and trustworthyness, Mr. Warner now says he’s not for a date certain for withdrawal from Iraq. Really? This is what he said at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in February:
“And come January, 2009, we need to start to bring our brave troops home from Iraq. . . .” Sounds pretty certain to me.
He also vetoed a Virginia energy plan agreeing to off-shore drilling if the feds ever granted such permission. But at the Shad Planking April 16, he said:
“I’ve said in terms of offshore, we ought to take a look.”
Who can trust this guy? Tim Kaine better hope he can or his plan will end up in the same place those Soprano’s characters did. We continue to hope.