How's Tim Kaine going to pay for his popular pre-school education plan? There have been a lot of questions about that in recent days, but it's actually quite simple: it?s all a matter of setting priorities. Essentially, it comes down to how Tim Kaine would spend general fund dollars. And, thanks to the budget surplus and strong economy produced under Mark Warner and Tim Kaine's leadership, Virginia is now fortunate to have a surplus with which it can address important priorities. In contrast to Jerry Kilgore, who wants to build roads, give tax credits to parents for school supplies, and spend money on a zillion other priorities with the state's surplus (assuming he doesn't squander it first on trickle-down tax cuts for rich people and corporations), Tim Kaine essentially has two big-ticket budget items he?s proposing to push through as Governor. First, there's education, with the big piece of that being the "Start Strong" pre-school program mentioned above. Second, there's his health care credit for small businesses that would help provide insurance to employees. Two top priorities -- education and health care -- for which there will be plenty of room in the budget since Tim Kaine doesn't plan to pile on a bunch of other stuff like Jerry Kilgore is proposing to do (with no way to pay for it, of course).
The most important point, though, is that both of Tim Kaine's proposals have major back-end cost savings associated with them. The pre-K program, for example, is far less expensive than remedial education, incarceration, and other alternatives to improving the performance of our public education system and keeping kids engaged in school. In addition to education, Tim's health care proposal saves big bucks, in this case on Medicaid. My understanding is that 70% or so of Medicaid recipients in Virginia are members of a household where there is a person who works but doesn?t get health insurance from their employer. Tim Kaine's plan would help tremendously to deal with this problem.
In sum, Tim Kaine can pay for his top two priorities - education and health care - out of Virginia's budget surplus, which he helped create. Then, our state will benefit for decades to come by having better educated children, healthier people, and lower costs for such things as crime and Medicaid payments. Sounds like a pretty darn good deal to me!