Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin took a public victory lap this week, claiming credit for managing the Old Dominion’s budget into a $1 billion surplus.
In his annual Joint Money Committee Address before the Commonwealth’s relevant legislative committees, Youngkin, a Republican, laid out how, in recent years, most of the surrounding states’ growth had become attractive to longtime Virginians.
Youngkin began by greeting the Democratic committee chairs: House Appropriations Chair Luke Torian of Prince William, House Finance Chair Vivian Watts of Fairfax and Senate President L. Louise Lucas, who serves as the upper chamber’s finance chairwoman.
“Our neighbors in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida have been rapidly growing,” Youngkin said. “Many Virginians were choosing to go there instead of here.”
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during the Faith & Freedom Coalitions Road to Majority Policy Conference at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., on June 22. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Most of those states shifted toward lowering taxes, he said, while Virginia had been “falling behind” since the year Gov. Robert McDonnell — its last Republican governor — left office, he said.
“Across the country today, there are winning states, and there are losing states,” Youngkin said.
The governor, seen by some as presidential timber in future cycles while facing the Old Dominion’s one-and-done term limit, said there are economic winners and losers state-to-state.
“States that are winning with job growth, population growth, opportunity growth — and others that are not,” he said.
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Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin holds a campaign event in Amherst, Virgina, on Oct. 28, 2021. (Charles Creitz)
Youngkin said such “winning states” are “domina[ting]” the national map in terms of economic growth and fiscal stewardship.
Most of the “losing states,” he said, are running with budget deficits, while Virginia and the other Southeastern states he mentioned — all but one of which are Republican-led — are faring better.
In remarks to Fox News Digital, Youngkin said that Virginia proves tax relief is a “catalyst for record job creation [and] business growth.”
“The playbook works,” he said. “We are demonstrating in Virginia that a state, once falling behind, can lead when we ‘invest’ in tax relief and understand that money belongs to the people who work for it, not the government.”
The Virginia Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, is seen on Feb. 9, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“We’ve already delivered $5 billion in tax relief for Virginia families, and by the end of my administration, we will have delivered at least $8 billion in tax relief to help Virginians keep more of their hard-earned money,” he added.
With the surplus, the governor said, his budget plans to see hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements to the heavily trafficked Interstate 81, which serves as a 323-mile backbone of the state for much of mid-continent commerce as it connects the Northeast’s trucking hubs with several cross-country highways.
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About $90 million of the surplus will also go toward a Virginia military survivors and dependents fund.
However, Youngkin warned against profligately spending the new windfall, saying that what befell Virginia in the past “will happen again.”