Ryan Budget Is A Disaster For Virginia

One of the things smart political campaigns do is ignore their biggest weakness and pretend it is actually a strength.  Many times by using this tactic the media will totally miss the weakness in the first place.

I believe that is what the Romney campaign is doing by announcing Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan here in Virginia.

Paul Ryan may be an asset to the GOP ticket in many ways, and in many states.  He could put some states into play in the midwest. We'll see.  But there is no swing state where he is a bigger liability then here in Virginia and that's probably why Romney is bringing him here first.

The Ryan budget has dramatic cuts to federal spending phased in over the next decade.  These cuts would require a major reduction in the federal workforce.  No area in the country would be as hard hit by this budget than the DC metro area.

What would Northern Virginia look like with these cuts?  Tens of thousands of fewer jobs, millions of square feet of additional vacant office space, etc.  Every business would be hit from fewer customers, local governments would see their revenues decline, and property values would take dramatic falls, trapping many people in underwater mortgages.

But it's not just Northern Virginia that would suffer.  Almost every county outside of Northern Virginia in the state has an education composite index at the state level that gives it far more in revenue than its local taxpayers send to Richmond.  Why is that?  Northern Virginia pays huge chunks of the basic education costs all over the state.  Without that revenue source, Richmond would find itself in far worse budget situations than even what was seen at the lowest point of the recent great recession.  Big cuts to federal spending in Northern Virginia will hit the entire state.

This is no doomsday scenario- this is the reality if the Ryan budget is voted into law.  It's already passed the U.S. House, and the Romney-Ryan ticket is embracing it.  A switch of a couple Senate seats and this could be law as early as next year.

Mitt Romney literally just declared war on Virginia.  This state will not be anything like it is today if he is elected and the Romney-Ryan budget goes into law.  That's why they decided to come here first- and hope that no one notices the fine print.

Comments

[Hokieguru]

Terrific post - well said.

In the end, Northern Virginia will be able to pay it's expenses - it will tax itself more.

The other areas of the state can't afford to do that - and this would be the Romney/Ryan/McDonnell legacy - their policies could end up hurting their base the most.

[Dan]

Ben, you don't understand. Yes, Rmoney embraced the Ryan budget "100%" when he was running in the Republican primaries.And yes, Rmoney chose Ryan for the ticket to appease the far right wackos who think the Ryan budget is just swell. But you must have missed his remarks later in the day today where he said he was NOT running on the Ryan budget.

You see, Rmoney just shook up the Etch-a-Sketch again. He LOVES the Ryan budget, but he is running on his own economic proposals. You know. The ones that blow a giant gaping hole in the deficit except that they won't because of all the super secret loophole closing he is going to do but can't tell us anything specific about until after the election. You just have to trust him.

I am old enough to recall the 1968 election. Nixon had a "secret plan" to end the Viet Nam war. He won that election and it turned out his "secret plan" was to fight the goddamned war for five more years and put another twenty thousand names up on the wall.

So, when I see Rmoney's ridiculous economic proposals that don't square with reality or math and he makes silly general statements about "closing loopholes" with absolutely no indication of what "loopholes" he is talking about I believe I'll take a pass on this clown. Nixon didn't contradict himself anywhere nearly as often as Rmoney does. The guy is a total joke.

I love the Ryan pick though. I believe it was reactive rather than the result of any proactive strategy. Rmoney is flailing. I believe they saw the punishment he was taking (most of it self inflicted) and that it was reflected in multiple polls showing the president up by the high single digits nationally. I believe they feared their situation was in danger of becoming irretrievably lost and that the pick and the accelerated timing of it were made out of panic at losing rather than as part of a strategy to win.

Democrats should all be smiling today.

[Thomas]

Count on Virginia's wingnut lemmings to follow Romney and Ryan over the financial cliff. Talk about poetic justice finally being rendered!

Maybe it's its time for Northern Virginia to secede (joke) from Confederate Virginia.

[SouthsideCentral]

"Literally"?

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

[DCCyclone]

Good post, Ben. I think OFA has been a little slow out of the gate attacking the Ryan plan in all its implications, but I could be prejudging that and I hope they have a plan to communicate in due course through the final months.