Well, well, well…will wonders never cease? Now it turns out that Bob McDonnell, facing the consequences of his own party’s recklessness in holding the nation’s fiscal solvency hostage over a normally routine debt ceiling increase, is starting to sound like a Democrat.
An analysis done by George Mason University for the Aerospace Industries Association finds more than 2.14 million jobs nationally could be lost if the automatic cuts occur, a process known on Capitol Hill as “sequestration.”
Behind California, Virginia stands to lose the most jobs if the cuts take effect. When defense and non-defense cuts are taken into account, the analysis says Virginia would lose 207,571 jobs. Texas, D.C. and Maryland round out the top five for total job losses, with D.C. losing 127,407 defense and non-defense jobs and Maryland losing 114,795 jobs.
McDonnell wants a compromise and says a practical solution would include cuts and revenue increases.
Note that Bob McDonnell strongly supported the “sequestration” compromise, but now that the rubber is hitting the road, apparently – to mix metaphors – he’s getting cold feet. In fact, on this morning’s WTOP radio “Ask the Governor” program, McDonnell even went so far as to wax rhapsodic about bipartisanship, noting that “Democrats and Republicans working together have made Virginia a great place to live and work.” What next, lions lying down with lambs? The coming of the age of Aquarius? Corey Stewart channeling Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama? (oh wait, that actually happened – lol)
More on the “flip”
Anyway, these comments by T-Bob are fascinating. For one thing, they are – to my knowledge, anyway – the first time our esteemed governor has been cited anywhere as suggesting that there should be a balance between spending cuts and revenue increases to resolve the impending sequestration cuts to defense and entitlement programs. In short, McDonnell now appears willing to compromise and add revenue increases to the mix, which of course is the position of Democrats like Tim Kaine, Barack Obama, Mark Warner, Jim Webb, Gerry Connolly, Jim Moran, Bobby Scott, etc. So, from all of us here at Blue Virginia, we’d like to welcome Bob McDonnell aboard the reason and sanity train, also known as the “Democratic Party.” LOL
Seriously, though, why is T-Bob softening his position and moving towards the burn-at-the-stake Teapublican heresy (at least to Grover Norquist, the Koch brothers, etc.) of “revenue” (aka, “tax”) increases? Hard to say, but one possibility is that McDonnell is smarting from having to cancel his hyper-partisan press conference last week at the US Capitol, after the entire Virginia Democratic congressional delegation raised hell over the fact that McDonnell, Cantor, and the rest of Virginia’s Republican Congressional delegation, planned to follow the annual, (normally) bipartisan delegation meeting with an unfair, one-sided attack on Democrats (again, this is almost 100% Republicans’ fault) over sequestration. The Democrats’ boycott of the delegation meeting, and the last-minute cancellation of the press conference (5-10 minutes after the delegation meeting was scheduled to begin, from what I hear) clearly embarrassed McDonnell a great deal.
So, now T-Bob is backpedaling furiously, trying to save Virginia from what would be a devastating impact on our economy next year — again, thanks to his party’s irresponsibility. Remember, no matter what Republicans try to tell you about what rugged individualists and “by their own boostraps”/”did it 100% on my own” people they are, in fact Virginia’s economy is more dependent on federal spending and employment (defense and civilian federal, contractor, all the “multipliers” and spinoffs flowing from that employment) that comes from our Commonwealth being located adjacent to Washington, DC. Fascinating how that works, huh? It’s amazing what happens to overheated Tea Party rhetoric when it meets reality – poof, there it goes, bye bye, nice knowing you! 🙂
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