Senator Colgan and Honorable Senators and Delegates:

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Tonight’s presentations about Virginia’s $2-billion transportation shortfall ignore the large increase in Virginia’s budget. The presentations also do not acknowledge that non-transportation programs are getting large budget increases.

For example, your proposed budget increases higher-education spending by 20 percent ($600M), even though the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) reports that budgets for four-year colleges have been increasing three times faster than enrollment, even after adjusting for inflation.

I do not know what this money is accomplishing. Our universities are graduating so few scientists and engineers that we rely on immigrants to fill high-technology positions.

Your proposed budget increases public-school spending by 19 percent ($1B), even though for 25 years, combined state, local, and federal inflation-adjusted public-school spending in Virginia has been increasing ten times faster than enrollment. Public-school staff over the same period has been increasing seven times faster than enrollment. What has this accomplished? According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, 60 percent of Virginia schoolchildren achieve below grade level.

Your proposed budget increases healthcare spending, which I assume is primarily Medicaid, by 18 percent ($1B). I have in my hand a Nov. 28, 2005, front-page Washington Post article ("Medicaid Cutbacks Divide Democrats"). It tells how Medicaid allows "… affluent seniors to transfer their assets to relatives, then plead poverty to get Medicaid to pay for them to stay in nursing homes."

Should we neglect transportation so Medicaid can provide long-term care for the affluent?

Your proposed budget increases public-safety spending by 15 percent ($400M). Our prison population is increasing two to four times faster than overall population. This is a crisis that you ignore. I suggest that most prison inmates grew up on welfare.

The reality is that our taxes fund mismanaged government programs that yield grave unintended consequences.

Higher taxes reward and encourage mismanagement. There would be ample money for transportation if you managed your budgets. Elected officials raise taxes to avoid governing. You need to start governing and tackle the difficult and politically volatile issues of waste in out-of-control social programs, including public education, healthcare, and welfare.

Thank you.

Updated May 21, 2006