In today’s Daily Press, former RPV chair Patrick McSweeney waxes ludicrous on our former budget crisis, writing:
[I]t will be difficult at the next session for some politicians to resist making long-term “commitments” to new and expanded state programs. If that sentiment prevails, the General Assembly will exacerbate the “structural deficit” that Gov. Mark Warner complained about throughout his 2001 gubernatorial campaign.
Let me repeat my thesis: There can be no such “structural deficit” under the Virginia Constitution.
The dwindling free-lunch coalition in the General Assembly continues to delude itself with such logic. x cannot exist, ergo, x does not exist. Structural deficits cannot exist under the Virginia Constitution, therefore, there is no problem with funding highway maintenance. Structural deficits cannot exist under the Virginia Constitution, therefore there is no problem with funding obligations localities in the face of eliminated car tax revenue.
If we passed a law declaring that the flat-earth wing of the RPV didn’t exist, perhaps they would disappear in a poof of logic.