Commonsense Virginia Budget

Afp Va Budget

As newly elected Governor McDonnell discusses the state budget with Virginia legislators and tries to salvage a $4 billion shortfall, the Virginia chapter of Americans for Prosperity unveiled several budget recommendations to the General Assembly today, finding specific areas where simple budget cuts will save billions of dollars.

This budget provides to citizens and lawmakers a road map on how to weather the current economic downturn. This is a time of opportunity for Virginia, but we can’t spend our way to prosperity. If we act wisely now, we can provide a competitive advantage in the future and avoid a repeat of these cycles of boom and bust.

An independent accountant, Steven Anderson joined with AFP State Director Ben Marchi, Del. Ben Cline & Del. Brenda Pogge to create the model budget, identifying the most basic functions of the state government and ensuring those agencies were adequately funded. The proposed budget reduces the overall General Fund budget by consolidating or eliminating wasteful or redundant programs and agencies.

Delegate Cline hailed the 139 page report saying, "The complexity of the many state agencies’ funding sources and programs make it difficult for our elected officials to discern where the unnecessary expenditures lay.”

AFP has put together a comprehensive budget that provides a principle based fiscal philosophy that any legislator can apply to the process of spending taxpayer funds, and taxpayers can use to judge their legislators’ adherence to spending tax dollars prudently.

Delegate Pogge said AFP's model budget will help legislators avoid increasing taxes and certain fees as has been the case in tight budget sessions before: "The errors of the past should be avoided even though they may appear to be the easy way out. This is a historical opportunity to position Virginia in the competition for businesses and jobs ahead of the other 49 states and indeed much of the globe."

AFP's budget for Virginia was modeled off of the Freedom Budget, a state budget published by the John Locke Foundation, a free-market think tank in North Carolina. AFP’s proposed budget follows this approach but applies a more broad-ranging examination of every function Virginia state government attempts to perform.

NOTE: Steven J. Anderson, CPA, is licensed in Kansas and Oklahoma. He received an undergraduate degree in accounting and finance at Fort Hays State University, and earned an M.B.A. at the University of Central Oklahoma. Anderson is managing partner of the Edmond, Okla. office of Anderson, Reichert & Anderson, CPAs LLC, which is headquartered in Osborne, Kan. He is also a Research Fellow for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.