D.J. McGuire is raising the red flag on the sales tax hike in the General Assembly; some good news, some bad news:
The good news:
Delegate Christopher Peace (R-97th, which includes a precinct or two in my home county of Spotsylvania) wrote about the proposed versions of the sales tax hike in the Richmond Times Dispatch , and actually made it clear how damaging the House version was.
The bad news: Peace himself shows little passion for this. Even in this op-ed piece, he can’t seem to bring himself to say that no tax increaseis acceptable.
That said, he didn’t endorse any tax hike either.
This may be the first movement of House Republicans away from the nonsense the Appropriations Committee cooked up. There may yet be hope that a sales tax hike will not make it out of conference committee –if we Virginians make clear that no tax increase is acceptable, period.
Not only is this idea abysmally wrong headed, but during and economic crunch a sales tax hike cloaked as some sort of pre-paid accellerated chip shot deal is boneheaded at best.
Virginia Republicans need to ask this: How hard is it to come out of just one session
without a tax hike?