Apr 17 2011

Quietly, State-by-State, GOP Rights The Economy

Published by at 8:45 am under All General Discussions

While the left is running around making dishonest and false claims for any gullible lefty to fantasize over, the GOP governors are out there demonstrating to Americans that rejecting the left and supporting the libertarian core of the GOP does produce immediate and stunning results. The left can whinge and wail, but when the GOP produces real economic results there will be no contest in the 2012 elections.

The first beach heads the GOP was able to turn back from the liberal spending madness were VA and NJ. In 2009 VA elected Robert McDonnell in a massive landslide that turned the Dem-GOP results around by 17% points from the year earlier with President Obama’s ‘False Hope’ election. Since then the Common Wealth of Virginia has never had to regret that decision:

His administration has been predicting since June that year-end numbers would show that the state had returned to profitability for the year. Still, the official numbers will be comforting for officials that have spent the last year making deep cuts in the state budget to close shortfalls. “We’ve been able to turn it around in short order,” McDonnell said during the radio program. “The good news is we’ve started to see a ray of sunshine. We’ve started to turn things around.”

The General Assembly agreed that state surplus money for the year would go to pay state employees and 3 percent raise bonus. Employees have gone without raises since 2006 and the state workforce has seen multiple rounds of layoffs. Lawmakers in both parties called for surplus funds to be used to provide employee relief.

McDonnell has also had positive impacts on where education money was spent and in defending Virginians from Obamacare. Since the Governor is term limited in VA, it is unfortunate to think we Virginians cannot retain this man’s skills longer.

In New Jersey Chris Christie was also swept into office on a huge reversal of the vote between 2008 and 2009. Christie has been boring into runaway government spending ever since.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie introduced a $29.4 billion budget Tuesday that demands many concessions from state workers, as well as cuts spending and taxes.

Christie, who has gained a national reputation for coming down hard on public employees, wants workers to pay more for their health care. Raising their co-payments and premiums will save the state $323 million. By 2014, the governor would require them to pay for 30% of their medical benefits, up from 8% now.

And he gave lawmakers extra incentive to act and workers extra pressure to comply. If these changes are made, the state will be able to double property tax rebates.

The governor also reiterated his call for legislators to overhaul the state’s strapped pension system, which has a $54 billion deficit.

If Christie continues to be successful, NJ will see a balanced budget and its citizens will be living under a much lighter tax burden. Government workers may complain they have to invest in their own medical insurance and pensions, but they still represent a fraction of any state’s population. If the general population is happy, unions have to go along.

Now GOP Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin has not only weathered the storm of liberal-union petulance, he has also turned his state’s budget around towards historic stability:

It found the so-called structural deficit – the imbalance between spending and tax revenue as laid out in state law – for the 2013-’15 budget would be $31 million. That assumes Walker’s budget passes the Legislature without new spending increases or tax cuts that would add to the deficit.

Under its existing form, Walker’s budget leaves the state with a fraction of the structural deficits seen in the past eight budget cycles. The next lowest structural deficit in recent years was $1.5 billion, or 48 times as much as what Walker’s proposing.

Newly seated GOP Governor John Kasich in Ohio is making similar progress:

Fulfilling his promise not to raise taxes, Ohio Gov. John Kasich Tuesday unveiled a budget that slashes spending for many agencies and seeks to privatize certain government functions to eliminate an $8 billion budget deficit.

“We can’t tax our way to prosperity, but we can’t cut our way either,” said Kasich in his town-hall style budget address.

Now, imagine a 2012 election cycle where the economic backdrop is OH, NJ, WI, VA and many other GOP led states arcing out of the recession and states like NY and CA and other Democrat disasters still sinking. With this scene playing out and the Federal Government still a basket case because of Reid and Obama resisting real change, there will be clear and obvious choices for the American people to select from.

I mean, it won’t even be close folks. Results are the quiet hammer that shuts down the whining and doomsayers on the left. Results speak louder than protests.

3 responses so far

3 Responses to “Quietly, State-by-State, GOP Rights The Economy”

  1. […] The Strata-Sphere » Quietly, State-by-State, GOP Rights The Economy Posted in gopTags: gop, gopass, goped […]

  2. The left can whinge and wail, but…

    I’ve wondered for some time now, where in Hell did “whinge” come from? It’s not even in my dictionary (American Heritage).

    Was it a combo of “whine” and “cringe”?

    Apparently, the problem with my dictionary is the “American” part. The word appears to be English English as opposed to American English, and actually does appear in the Oxford dictionary.

    All of which demonstrates that even they are not always perfect. 🙂

  3. AJStrata says:

    “whinge” is most definitely the English (UK) version of whine …