Last year, reports said Del. Ben Cline (R-Amherst) was chastened by an outpouring of support at public hearings for tax increases. Still, this year, he’s pandering to the anti-tax crowd.
“Last year, we passed a record tax increase in order to fund an increase in government spending by 15 percent in a single year. A lot of folks, me included, are concerned to see that level of government expansion,” Cline said.
“We also recognize that the surplus that this has helped create, and we’re talking about a surplus that is in the area of $1 billion and counting, doesn’t need to go back into increasing spending even further,” Cline said.
“We need to recognize those individuals and businesses who have created the surplus that we’re now seeing in the first place. The taxpayers of Virginia, the hard-working men and women of Virginia, are the reason that this surplus even exists,” Cline said.
“They’re the ones who should be enjoying it. Not the government bureaucracy,” Cline said.
He must be spending a lot of time at the gas pumps or pumping Slurpees, given what he said about the public meetings last year: “I have to balance what I hear tonight with what I hear every day at the gas station, the convenience store and on Main Street.”
Cline is a freshman, I believe, obviously planning to run on the platform that the tax hikes were a bad idea. Let’s hope the folks back in his district point out what those tax hikes paid for.