Virginia’s House of Delegates unanimously killed former Gov. Tim Kaine’s $2 billion income tax increase Thursday after Republicans forced a vote on what was widely seen as a dead-on-arrival proposal.
The widely expected decision followed a lengthy round of rancor and political gamesmanship between the two parties. Democrats looked to drop the bill from consideration, while the Republican leadership hoped to box the minority party into an awkward position — choosing between rebuking the Kaine administration or supporting a tax increase in a down economy.
The proposal had little hope for success under new Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who has vowed to veto any such increase.
“We all know why this bill is here,” said House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong, D-Henry, during debate on the House floor. “It’s here to embarrass us, it’s here to embarrass Tim Kaine. It’s here to poison the well.”
House Republicans had shipped the doomed legislation out of committee quickly and refused to let the bill’s patron — Del. Bob Brink, D-Arlington — remove it from the agenda.
The new 1 percent income surtax would have replaced the despised car tax that lawmakers began rolling back in 1998. The new revenue would have substituted for a $950 million annual state subsidy paid to local governments to backfill the reduced car tax.
Republicans fired back that Kaine’s decision to include the tax proposal in his two-year budget was simply an effort to avoid fully confronting a $4.2 billion shortfall through mid-2012. The former governor’s budget contains $2.3 billion in cuts to services that include K-12 education and health care. The demise of the income tax increase means legislators will have to cut an additional $2 billion.
“Tim Kaine had a situation to deal with and he didn’t want to deal with it,” said House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, who accused the former governor of putting a “land mine” in the budget.
Both the House and Senate will craft their own budget proposals and forge a compromise between the two documents by the time the session adjourns in mid-March.
