Daily Press Slams the House GOP's "Ominbus Debacle" Transportation Plan

Some Republicans were labeling their road legislation with the always popular and thoroughly meaningless appellation of "omnibus" - a gathering together, you know.

What a hoot. Omnibus debacle is more like it. It's big-time borrowing on a not-altogether solid basis. It's "instructing" local governments to raise taxes, because state legislators prefer not to do so themselves. It's perhaps a new public gambling scheme based on horse races past. Worst, it's building roads on the back of the state general fund.

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...There's an underlying agenda here for the "government is bad" set, and that is to deliberately skewer the general fund.

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Well, here's the short, brutal explanation. Go heavy into the general fund for roads and you effectively plant a bomb in the state budget. It might not go off soon or even for years. But when the inevitable economic slowdown occurs and state revenues dwindle, ka-boom! It's called fiscal physics.

"Ka-boom" is right.  This plan is dangerous and should be tossed onto the ash heap of history where it belongs.  The only question at this point is how much longer Senate Republicans - and Governor Kaine as well - are going to let this charade continue.  As the Daily Press points out, "soon Kaine will have to plant some flags in the ground" and not let House Republicans keep "humiliating his budget initiatives" - land preservation, pre-kindergarten education, etc., etc. 

In sum, we're approaching crunch time here, where the rubber meets the road, and any other cliche you can think of.  The question is, will our leaders in Richmond put a stop to this insanity, or will they decide - to use yet another cliche -  that "making a bad decision is better than making no decision at all?"

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