Mark Warner has been contradicted by . . . Mark Warner

Former Governor and current Senate candidate Mark Warner has been spouting for months that he had to raise taxes on Virginians in 2004 in order to balance the budget (perhaps you've seen him mention this on TV). Well, now we have found someone who can put that nonsense to rest.

His name? Why, it's Mark Warner! Here's what I mean (Heartland Institute, emphasis added):

The governor’s proposed biennial budget includes nearly an 8 percent increase in FY 2005 and nearly 4.5 percent increase in FY 2006. The governor has suggested the $1 billion tax package is needed to prevent cuts in the budget, fully fund Medicaid, re-fund the rainy day fund, and implement “standards of quality” (SOQ) improvements in education.

Now, "fully fund Medicaid" sounds innocent enough, but in reality it meant continuing Warner's policy of expanding socialized medicine, a plan that added over $1.5 billion in spending to the FY05-06 budget, more than Warner's entire tax increase.

Mark Warner knew even in 2004 that his tax increase was not necessary, but he hid the new spending behind the "fully fund Medicaid" phrase in the hope that voters, the press, and legislators wouldn't notice, and it worked - until last weekend.


I've asked before; I'll ask again. Do we really want a Senator who busted the state's finances in order to move Virginia closer to the "single payer" health nightmare? Wouldn't it be better to vote for the guy who refused to do this?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

So THAT'S where all the money went in Virginia

The Gilmore-Warner Senate debate this morning will certainly have plenty of material for the Warnerese-English translator, but there was one point of disagreement that piqued my curiosity (excerpt from Vivian Paige, emphasis added):

Warner: Let’s revisit one of the issues that was one of the ideological hot buttons for you, Jim. It was your reluctance to support any kind of children’s health insurance program. Even though the legislature said please let’s put in place this children’s health insurance program you said it offended your philosophical positions. Instead Virginia during your term sent back 56 million in federal dollars that were supposed to come into Virginia that instead got spent in other states to sign up kids for children’s health insurance. Jim was that the right decision, to not sign up those kids for children’s health insurance?

Gilmore: Here’s the answer, Mark. We established that FAMIS program and started it, and we actually created a program that was correct philosophically and in terms of what was best for families. It was a private health insurance, families had to have some responsibility of their own and pay a co-payment. It was not a welfare program, and gave people the dignity to know that they were taking care of themselves with the assistance of a state program like FAMIS. But when Mark Warner came in he concluded that the measure of success was simply putting people on a government welfare program and as a result he lowered the thresholds and then signed everybody up into Medicaid. And what happened was this program went up because everybody went on Medicaid the numbers on Medicaid went up. And that’s what the difference is that he hasn’t told you today. But it reflective of something. And the question is, what are the health care policies that we’re going to face in the United States Senate. Barack Obama has come forward with a health care plan that is gonna say that employers have to pay to play and that in fact they have to offer a certain type of program or they will be taxed if they are an employer, and government will impose that on you. It says that insurance companies have to offer particular kinds of benefits and control certain types of programs. And then for extra measure he puts in a government-controlled program which will squeeze out private insurance. And in fact the more Medicaid goes up like Mark’s type of program, the harder it is on private insurance options. And so the question I’ve got for you Mark, when you get to the United States Senate are you going to be supporting Barack Obama’s health care program, or will you be supporting John McCain and myself, who want to put in place a more private kind of program, a private program that creates associations and more opportunities for private care, and more opportunities for guaranteed admission into private programs, so that in fact you can utilize the private sector, or you gonna go to in fact this type of government control that Barack Obama would like to do? And I think
that’s the fundamental question that we have to ask and I think we already know the answer, because when the time came on SCHIP and FAMIS, you put ‘em in a government program.

Now, as you can see, this is a serious ideological difference, but after noticing that, another thought quickly came into my head - if Warner expanded Medicaid like that, it should show up in budget numbers. So, after doing some digging, I found out where Medicaid spending shows up in the budget (Department of Medical Assistance Services), and started looking at the changes from budget to budget. Here's what I found (Dept. of Planning and Budget):

Fiscal Year DMAS Spending Increase
2003 $3,719,897,469 13.7%
2004 $4,030,280,698 8.3%
2005 $4,563,474,648 13.2%
2006 $4,921,099,602 7.8%
2007 $5,320,510,865 8.1%
2008 $5,662,663,577 6.4%
2009 (Projected) $5,841,781,048 3.2%
2010 (Projected) $6,165,171,257 5.5%

As you can see, the increases were quite dramatic during Warner's term (FY2003-FY2006). Certainly, Warner's decision to turn Gilmore's private-insurance plan into another part Medicaid had something to do with that. The question is, how much?

Well, while it's impossible to know the exact budgetary numbers if Gilmore's plan had been maintained, I calculated what the increases would have been if the numbers were just held to population growth (averaged at 1.2% a year) and inflation. I should note that I did not use the regular CPI, but the health care CPI as calculated by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The resulting numbers were as follows:

Fiscal Year Health Care Inf. Pop. Growth Spending growth Proj. Spending Diff. from Actual
2003 4.6% 1.2% 5.9% $3,463,755,841 $256,141,628
2004 4.6% 1.2% 5.9% $3,666,565,673 $363,715,025
2005 4.0% 1.2% 5.2% $3,858,987,039 $704,487,609
2006 4.4% 1.2% 5.7% $4,077,127,859 $843,971,743
2007 4.2% 1.2% 5.5% $4,299,347,635 $1,021,163,230
2008 4.0% 1.2% 5.2% $4,524,977,399 $1,137,686,178
2009 Budget # used 3.2% $4,668,108,365 $1,173,672,683
2010 Budget # used 5.5% $4,926,526,222 $1,238,645,035

The numbers are mind-boggling. The extra $1.55 billion for FY05-06 is more than Warner's entire tax hike. Over the entire eight years, the difference is $6.74 billion - $2.2B more than raised by Warner's tax hike over that six year period. Imagine how that $2.2 million could have been improved, say, our transportation network.

So, if you want to know why your taxes went up, and (for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads) why you're snarled in traffic, today's debate gave the answer: it was so Mark Warner could knock out low-income private health insurance and expand government controlled health care.

Do we really want to reward the author of this costly and ideological mistake with a seat in the U.S. Senate? Shouldn't we instead choose the fellow who tried to prevent this budget-buster?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Not even Warner's 2001 comments are immune from the translator

Sixteen seconds were more than enough for the then-would-be-Governor to slip into Warnerese. Write Side goes to the videotape (well, sort of). As usual, the English is bold and in italics:

I will finish the repeal of the car tax . . .

Oh, the car tax repeal will be finished, alright. "Completed" is a whole different story . . .

. . . and Mark, I think I've counted - you've now said thirteen times that I'm going to raise taxes.

. . . and Mark, I think it's been thirteen times you've made me lie to the voters.

You've got that one-trick pony; it's just not going to work.

You ought to know by now that I'm a pro at lying through my teeth. Do you really think I'm going to crack now?

The fact is, I will not raise taxes.

The fact is, I will say over and over again that I will not raise taxes until the rubes vote me in.

The rest, of course, is history.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

The Washington Post rewrites Virginia history

It's not easy being the editorial staff of the Washington Post. As the only MSM newspaper that continues to support the liberation of Iraq, the Post takes it on the chin from the left in ways we on the rightosphere can't even contemplate. Not even the paper's ridiculous and shameful takedown of George Allen (which actually spawned a need for political cover that led to the hilarious endorsement of Bob Ehrlich) has spared it.

Usually, the Post tries to rebuild its left-wing credibility by whacking Virginia Republicans (the Maryland GOP will be off-limits for a while in light of the Ehrlich incident), and over the weekend, they went after Jim Gilmore. Ostensibly the Post's editorial-page hit-job was for "those many thousands of Virginia residents who are new to the state or are newly of voting age" who are not aware of Gilmore's record. Unfortunately, they won't be any better informed after reading the editorial than they were before.

The errors in the Post piece are numerous and far-reaching, beginning with the initial paragraph:

It may seem odder still to watch prominent fellow Republicans either endorse Mr. Gilmore's Democratic opponent in the Senate race, former governor Mark R. Warner go mute when asked whom they support.

Actually, newer Virginians might understand this better than the editors. Given the history of Gilmore's "prominent fellow Republicans" (State Senate GOP: four tax increases proposed in five years; House of Delegates GOP: two tax increases enacted in five years), they're probably more likely to find favor with a GOP nominee that this crowd does not like.

The next paragraph has plenty of vituperative language, but no actual facts, so it's better skipped, especially since the "evidence" in the later paragraphs are also miles from reality, such as:

In Mr. Gilmore, Virginia had its very own Herbert Hoover. "State government is in sound financial shape," he declared sunnily in August 2001, even as state lawmakers from both parties predicted a $500 million revenue shortfall in the commonwealth's $25 billion budget . . .

For starters, Virginia's budget was not $25 billion when Gilmore left office; it was nearly $47 billion. In fact, the shortfall the Post cites was just over 1% of the budget, hardly a cataclysmic event. In fact, even the Post admits that the state was well-equipped to handle the problem:

Today, Mr. Gilmore innocently states that on leaving office in 2002 he bequeathed a balanced budget and $1 billion in reserves.

So, Gilmore's successor, even with a shortfall of $500 million, could have kept the state on sound fiscal footing.

What happened between August of 2001 and January of 2002? You guessed it, 9/11, not that the Post thinks that's important:

Mr. Gilmore's allies sometimes argue that no one could have foreseen the economic effects of the Sept. 11 attacks, which occurred four months before he left office. True enough, but also irrelevant: The problem had swollen to major proportions well before the attacks, and Mr. Gilmore ignored it.

Gilmore ignored the problem? With a reserve twice the size of what the perceived shortfall was?

Now the Post is now willing to credit Gilmore with the reserve, which was "statutorily required." Indeed it was, but that doesn't make the money go away, nor doe the funds magically become useless against a shortfall half the reserve's size - no matter how hard the editors assert otherwise:

And the reserves, for which Mr. Gilmore bears no responsibility -- they were
statutorily required -- did nothing to forestall the state's fiscal crisis.

Really? If the reserve "did nothing to forestall the state's fiscal crisis," why did Warner bleed it dry during his four years as Governor?

Then comes the supposed coup de grace, which to me looks like a serious potential for blowback:

It fell to Mr. Warner, who succeeded Mr. Gilmore as governor, to fix what
quickly mushroomed to a nearly $4 billion problem.

Wait a minute. What was that number? $4 billion, you say? I thought it was $6 billion! If the situation was actually $2 billion better than Warner claims, why did he need $1.6 billion in new taxes? While the Post aimed at Gilmore with this editorial, this sentence actually hits and destroys Warner's record. Whoopsie!

As for the rest of Gilmore's record, the Post continued getting things wrong:

Mr. Gilmore's term was marked not only by bad management but also by a
stiff-necked, belligerent political style that left him with few allies. In
Richmond, he shunned Democrats, disdained doubting Republicans and listened
mainly to a closed cabal of hard-line aides.

Gilmore "shunned Democrats"? That would come as a surprise to Charles Waddell, the longtime Democratic State Senator that Gilmore appointed to the Cabinet, or David Brickley, a Prince William Democratic Delegate who also found a job in the Gilmore Administration.

Moreover, there is one piece of Gilmore's record the Post completely missed: the food tax cut. In 1999, the Democrats proposed a two-point reduction in the sales tax on food. Many Democrats were genuinely concerned for less fortunate Virginians; more than a few were hoping to corner Gilmore into opposing a tax cut. Gilmore embraced the food-tax cut and enacted it on the first opportunity, shocking official Richmond and making him a bipartisan hero.

Oh, and as for the "toxic relationship with his opposite number in Maryland, then-Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat," the Post should know that Gilmore was hardly alone. Governor Glendening was one of the most loathed politicians in Maryland history - in fact, as I recall, even the Post found many reasons to rip him to shreds.

One final note, the editors promise to "review Mr. Warner's record as governor at a later date." Perhaps they will notice that Warner's last budget included an increase of $10.5 billion - $9 billion before the 2004 tax increase. If we're really luck, the editors will think to ask Warner: Where did the $9 billion go?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Don't you believe it!

So Mark Warner is insisting to anyone who will listen that he will not be Barack Obama's running mate. I've read the words (Bearing Drift) just like everyone else. I just don't believe them.

I have two reasons.

Warner's history with the truth: Mark Warner said he would cut spending as Governor. State spending rose more than 30.8% during his four years (and General Fund spending rose more than 18.9%). Mark Warner said he would not raise taxes; less than one year later he was demanding the people of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia increase their own taxes, and in 2004 he proposed and imposed the largest tax increase in Virginia history. Now he wants us to believe he would not accept the Vice Presidential nomination. Sorry, no dice.

Read more at the right-wing liberal

One other thing Bob Lewis didn't mention

Spank That Donkey does a decent takedown of Bob Lewis' latest report on the Gilmore-Warner race (but he forgot to cross-post), but there was one part of the Warner story that Lewis didn't mention: Warner's second biennial budget had $10.5 billion more in spending than his first.

In other words, $9 billion in new spending wasn't enough for Warner when he demanded a tax increase in 2004.

I ask again: where did the $9 billion go?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Why wasn't Vince upset about Gilmore's numbers in 2004?

Vince Callahan (former GOP Delegate from Northern Virginia) came out for Mark Warner today (Bearing Drift), for reasons that I find utterly baffling (Washington Post):

Callahan said Gilmore, Warner's GOP opponent, misled legislators and the public about the state's finances and the cost of his signature effort to eliminate the car tax when he was governor from 1998 to 2002.

"The figures Gilmore used were so utterly erroneous and far-fetched that they were mind-boggling," said Callahan, who helped Gilmore push his car tax proposal through the House of
Delegates in the late 1990s.

. . .

Gilmore and legislative leaders agreed to phase out the tax over five years. To make sure the state could afford it, they agreed to suspend the plan if revenue growth fell below 5 percent. In
2001, Chichester and Senate Republicans said the economy had slowed enough that they could not enact the fourth phase of the tax cut. But Callahan sided with Gilmore to keep it on track.

Callahan, who represented McLean from 1968 until this year, said he made a mistake because the Gilmore administration gave him bad information about state finances.

Sounds bad, doesn't it? There's only one problem - Callahan never dropped his support for phase four of the car tax cut - even well after Gilmore and his "bad" numbers had left office.

In fact, in 2004, when the signature achievement of Mark Warner (the tax-hike and cap on car-tax relief) was put before the legislature - Callahan opposed Warner on both (here are the votes). This was a full two years into the Warner Administration, where any supposedly questionable Gilmore numbers were a thing of the past.

This leaves us three alternatives:

1. Callahan is mistaken.
2. Callahan is lying.
3. Gilmore was such a bad governor he managed to go two years into the future and foul up the revenue projections of his hostile successor without anyone getting wise.

I'll take #1.

Either way, this is a helpful reminder of just who fought to get rid of the car tax (Gilmore), and who resurrected it (Warner).

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

I'll see your Republican State Senator and raise you a Democratic Governor

So Mark Warner is touting his bipartisan support (without noticing that His Lordship John Chichester was just about the worst Republican he could cite as an example) in his campaign. To hear him say it, just about everybody was just peachy about his massive 2004 tax increase - except for the old curmudgeon Jim Gilmore.
Well, Warner may have won over a retired RINO State Senator, but his 2004 tax increase had its critics. In fact, it had big-name critics - big-name Republican and Democratic critics.

Taking a trip down memory lane, we go to March of 2004 (Free Lance-Star, emphasis added):

Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, and his Republican successor, Sen. George Allen, said in a joint news conference that Gov. Mark Warner and several lawmakers who have pushed for tax increases should have put forth those tax proposals before last November's general election.

. . .

Wilder and Allen accused Warner of breaking campaign promises not to raise taxes, and suggested some lawmakers re-elected last fall did the same thing.

"Because the people of Virginia were promised their taxes would not be raised, we believe our fellow citizens deserve an opportunity to vote by referendum before such broken promises are enacted into law," Wilder said.

Since it's too late for the tax proposals to be part of a general election debate, Wilder and Allen said, the General Assembly should pass a base budget that covers core services without a tax increase and then put all additional revenue and spending proposals on the ballot. They noted that Warner and many lawmakers supported a 2002 referendum in which Northern Virginia and
Hampton Roads voters rejected a sales-tax hike.

"If those who advocate billions in record income, sales, cigarette and gas taxes truly believe they have the support of the public, then our proposal to do what the governor and General Assembly provided in 2002--require approval by referendum before any new taxes become law--should not be feared by them at all," Wilder said.

That wasn't all Wilder said either (Growls):

Mr. Wilder also said, "The effort to exclude the everyday citizens from the tax debates has been so successful that the voice of the hardworking taxpayer is hardly being heard in Richmond today."

Finally, there was this coup de grace (Reason Foundation):

Wilder further added that he would not have endorsed Warner had he known Warner would champion tax hikes.

"If I had any idea that he would be raising the taxes beyond what he promised to me," Wilder said, "I would not have been there."

Ouch!

So let's recap. Doug Wilder, a Democrat who as Governor appointed Warner to lead the DPVA in 1993, considered the 2004 tax hike to be "broken promises" which ensured that "the voice of the hardworking taxpayer is hardly being heard in Richmond," and angered him so much that he said he wouldn't have endorsed Warner if he knew of it ahead of time.

Oh, and one more thing. When Doug Wilder won his first, historic statewide race for Lieutenant Governor in 1985, guess whom he beat?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Thank Mark Warner for fiscal discipline? It was the voters of NoVa and HR who deserve the credit!

The more I think about Mark Warner praising himself for getting Virginia's fiscal house in order, the more upset I get. It's not just that the situation was nowhere near as bad as Warner claims it was in January of 2002 (see Spank That Donkey and Jin Bowden for more on that), but that it wasn't even Mark Warner who turned Virginia's finances around - it was the voters in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Part of the disconnect here is that Warner is only remember for his actual 2002-04 budget. That it raised spending by more than 10% is bad enough (although the General Fund piece was largely unchanged), but what many forget is that the budget as we remember it today was not the budget as Warner had initially designed.

In fact, Warner was hoping to spend another $1.25 billion for his first biennium (which would have meant a 5% increase in General Fund spending and a 13% overall increase), he just wanted the people of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to pay for it. As Warner presented his first budget, he was also supporting a bill calling for referenda in those two regions that would impose a sales tax increase to fund transportation. Just to make sure the voters had extra incentive to vote yes, Warner gutted the transportation budget (Free Lance Star).

One of the reasons this little bait-and-switch quickly entered the memory hole was that the Republicans who controlled the General Assembly at the time were just as happy to send the bill to the NoVa and HR voters as Warner was. Both House Speakers (Vance Wilkins before he had to resign over a sexual harassment complaint and his successor, Bill Howell) backed the idea, as did the Senate GOP leadership (we now know this was the least of their errors). In fact, just about the only politician who did not have a hand in trying to ram tax increases down the voters were the roughly three-dozen legislators who opposed it - and Jim Gilmore.

The voters, however, had other ideas, and they thunderously rejected the tax hikes. Suddenly, the budget Warner hoped would scare voters into increasing taxes on themselves had become the only budget he had. So Warner, in a rare act of political cunning, erased the referenda failure from his mind, and pretended he had intended to tighten the screws on state spending all along. Richmond Republicans, eager to have voters forget their role in the fiasco, followed suit.

Thus was the legend of Mark Warner the budget-slasher born - a legend Warner used as cover for the 2004 tax increase and a second budget that jacked up spending by more than $10 billion.

In fact, Mark Warner's reputation as a prudent manager and "fiscal conservative" is a complete sham. It wasn't Warner who insisted Richmond slim down; it was the voters of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia who deserve the credit for forcing Virginia's politicians - Mark Warner included - to limit their appetites.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Here's the REAL Warner record (Where did the $9 billion go?)

You've heard the story, dear reader: Mark Warner inherits a massive budget deficit, waves a magic wand, turns the mean Republicans into good RINOs with some pixie dust, delivers the glass slipper of tax "reform," and everyone lives happily ever after.

Why did I end it like that? Because it's a fairy tale - or, if you prefer 30 Seconds to Mars (good band, BTW), it's a beautiful liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie.

The real Warner record, i.e., the one he actually compiled while here on Earth, is a little different.

Let's start with his first budget (2002-04), the one in which Warner supposedly reduced spending drastically. In fact, overall state spending rose more than 10% from the previous biennium (almost $5 billion). It is true that General Fund spending stayed roughly even, which is where Warner derived his reputation as a budget cutter. However, even here, there was more than met the eye.

One has to remember the context of the FY2002-04 budget; it did not happen in a vacuum. While Warner was wringing his hands over his supposed budget discipline he was also pushing for two referenda (one in Northern Virginia, the other in Hampton Roads) in which the voters of those regions would impose a sales tax increase on themselves that would generate roughly $625 million a year (Free Lance Star). With that money plowed into the budget, the General Fund would have risen 5% (and overall spending nearly 13%). As for the regular transportation budget, it was whacked by nearly $3 billion (FLS) - just as the referenda worked their way through the legislature (what a coincidence!). Warner put nearly all of his political capital into the referenda (in fact, he made them the centerpiece of his campaign for Governor in 2001), and most of the Richmond elite joined him. The voters, however were unimpressed, and the tax increases went down to landslide defeats.

Warner's bait-and-switch scheme had failed miserably, but on the plus side, there was still the bare-bones (and no roads) budget, that Warner could claim was part of a deliberate fiscal prudence all along (Bush the Younger made a similar move when the state legislature separated his 1997 tax shift plan and killed the tax hikes in it - Bush used the resulting tax cut to build his tax-cutting credentials). Moreover, since the tax increase would have only been limited to NoVa and HR, the rest of the state didn't notice Warner's little scheme, and took the lean budget at face value.

In other words, Mark Warner owes his reputation as a "fiscal conservative" to angry urban and suburban voters who rejected his signature - and in fact his only - campaign proposal.

Undaunted, Warner plowed on, this time with the nonsense of "tax reform" - which of course meant a tax increase. Warner wasn't a fool, he knew that a real Republican legislature would never have let him get away with it. However, he also knew that the GOP Senate majority had more than enough RINOs to get through whatever he wanted. Still, it was politically risky, until John Chichester gave him a gift.

Chichester shot for the moon and demanded a $3 billion tax increase, a mammoth amount that obliterated the GOP reputation as the low-tax party (already damaged by the party's support for the 2002 referenda). Warner then offered the coup de grace by calling for a tax increase roughly half that. As a result, he placed himself between the Republicans in the House and the RINOs in the Senate, and made himself look like the referee in a GOP civil war.

Of course, Warner insisted the tax hike was necessary to put the state on sound fiscal footing. What he didn't tell anyone was that his budget for 2004-06 was more than $10 billion higher than the previous one, an increase of almost 17%. More than $4 billion of that was in General Fund spending - meaning Warner could have balanced the budget and increased General Fund Spending by roughly than two-and-a-half billion dollars without any tax increase.

Bet you haven't heard that piece of info from the Warner people, have you?

The fact is, Mark Warner could have kept spending growth at the oh-so-miserly level of roughly $9 billion if he hadn't raised taxes, but he wanted $10.5 billion, so Virginians be damned.

Ever since Gilmore announced his Senate candidacy, the Democrats have been screaming about his "$6 billion" shortfall. My blogmates here have already turned that into swiss cheese (STD, JAB).

I, however, would like to as Mark Warner my own question.

Where did the $9 billion go?

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Mark Warner's trail of broken promises....

Mark Warner said repeatedly during the 2001 gubernatorial campaign that he would not raise taxes. He repeated it over and over, had TV ads that said it, and even stressed in an October 10, 2001, debate:

“I will not raise your taxes.”

He repeated it again:

“The fact is I will not raise taxes. You can say it 20 more times, but the people will know the difference.”

And then he was elected.

Not only did he break that promise, but he pushed through the largest tax increase in Virginia history.

Virginia does not need Mark Warner to represent the people of the Commonwealth. We cannot afford to have him represent the people of the Commonwealth.

H/T to RPV
Cross-posted at SWAC Girl
Jim Gilmore for Senate