AFPVA Lends A Hand With the Budget

A message from Americans for Prosperity:

Yesterday in Richmond, we rolled out our "Commonsense Model Budget" for VA. It was a packed house in the press briefing room at the General Assembly building and as you can imagine, there were lots of questions regarding where cuts should be made, how deep, and whether or not tax and certain fee increases would be appropriate to close the more than $4 billion shortfall we are currently facing. The reactions have been swift:

The Washington Post quoted Gov. Bob McDonnell's office as saying "The input from AFP will be very helpful in this process and we thank them for their innovative ideas."

The Lynchburg News & Advance quoted the report, pointing out that "even as the manufacturing, trade and services sectors of Virginia employment lost employees in the recession, government employment grew by 10,900."

WDBJ-TV in Roanoke quoted Delegate Ben Cline saying, "They (AFP) have put eyes on the budget and invested time, money and effort in reviewing our budget from top to bottom, and making specific recomendations."

The report details, by agency and department, where savings can be found by simply using controls that should have been used a long time ago. In all, we recommend more than $5 billion in cuts (including the $2 billion Gov. Kaine propsed.)

We made 5,000 copies of the 139 page report and will be distributing them to citizen activists around the commonwealth as we travel across Virginia holding dozens of town hall meetings in the next couple weeks.

I have to say, that in the more than two years as AFP's state director here in VA, nothing we've done to this point has been more important. It is time to turn the "cut spending" rhetoric into action.

Click here to contact your legislators and tell them, "No new tax increases in the
state budget,"

We have the opportunity to move Virginia forward. If we continue to make our voices heard, I know we will succeed. To view the report online, please visit our web site at www.afpva.org

In order to download the PDF, you must create a username and password by simply clicking "sign up."

Ben Marchi