When Democratic wunderkinds Mark Warner and Jim Webb start agreeing with veteran conservative Republican congressman Frank Wolf, something’s up. Our guess is that the recent Republican sweep of all three statewide offices in Virginia less than a year after the commonwealth went bonkers for Barack Obama is having a salutatory effect.
Both senators are now supporting Wolf’s SAFE (Securing America’s Future Economy) Commission Act, which the Northern Virginia Republican first introduced in the spring of 2006. It sets up a bipartisan commission similar to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that will finally force Congress to deal with the spending and entitlement crises.
Minority Whip Eric Cantor, who is also from Virginia, points out that 60 percent of the national red ink run up over the last decade has been added during the three years Democrats have been in control of Congress. The federal deficit is now an unprecedented $1.4 trillion.
Warner won national stature when he blasted predecessor , Jim Jim Gilmore for partially eliminating the despised car tax. Warner also rammed the largest tax increase in Virginia history through a Republican-controlled legislature, a feat that eventually won him a Senate seat, where he voted for the TARP bailouts and the stimulus package.
Now he’s apparently having second thoughts. Warner actually fretted about overspending in a Sunday appearance on CNN:
“I think the way we will get spending long term under control is to get bipartisan commission, and Democrats and Republicans come together and put revenues and spending out there and come back and vote up straight and down,” Warner told “State of the Union” host John King. “I don’t see how this process where everybody kind of lards on is actually ever going to come to an end until we finally have the discipline to do a straight up-or-down vote on revenues and spending cuts.” (Note: CNN removed the word “lards” from subsequent transcripts.)
Wolf has been howling about the disastrous financial path the nation has been on for three years, to little avail. But nothing focuses a politician’s attention like the prospect of getting your whole ticket rejected by disenchanted voters.
