Democrats Vs. Affordability

The Virginia General Assembly was going to convene on Monday, Oct. 26, to nominate and vote on judges for the Court of Appeals. The process is backlogged, and four seats needed to be filled when Sen. Scott Surovell announced the date.

Here’s the boring part. This session didn’t have the restrictions of a gubernatorial “special session” because there is still one going on. You read that correctly; the General Assembly is still technically in session.

They recessed at the end of the last session, which was the one called to settle the budget divide. I guess you could say that “If you live by the sword, you can ‘Sine Die’ by the sword.”

“So?” you ask.

So. Rather than a specifically defined agenda that would be required in a gubernatorially called special session, and since this is still technically a budget session, Republican leadership was going to propose a few things that they were SURE that Democratic leadership would be grateful to the GOP for discovering, so that they could be filed under their banner of “affordability.”

Del. Tom Garrett (R-Goochland) told me that the Republicans’ plan included three parts.

“One would have been to pull us from Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (aka; “Reggie”) to push down energy costs.”

The next one he said was, “We wanted to suspend the fuel tax.” He pointed to states already making that move. “Ohio, North Carolina, Utah, Georgia have all temporarily suspended their gasoline tax. In Virginia, we’re paying about five bucks every time we fill up our car just to the Commonwealth of Virginia in taxes.”

Their third was a removal of state income tax on tips.

Fewer taxes sure sound like they would be making life in Virginia more affordable.

However, loose lips sink ships. The story got out, and shortly after finding out about this, Surovell canceled the three-day agenda due to what he called scheduling issues.

“Members were planning on all kinds of travel plans and family plans and all kinds of stuff,” he told the Virginia Mercury. I guess there is a holiday in the third week of October I was not aware of.

Garrett was less kind in his view of why the session was canceled.

“And so yesterday we get an email that they’re canceling the special session. Why? Because they care more about you spending extra money and blaming Trump for it—even though it’s their policy that’s doing it—then they do about helping working women and men.”

Of course, the proposals would not stand a very good chance of passing, but the Democrats would have had to go on record voting not to lower your gas taxes or electric bills a week and a half before the end of “election season” here in Virginia.

Maybe avoiding that was the “travel plans” Surovell was referring to.

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