Kilgore is Anti-Education

By: Lowell
Published On: 9/8/2005 1:00:00 AM

Yesterday, Tim Kaine leveled a serious but appropriate charge at Jerry Kilgore.  Not that Jerry's corrupt, incompetent, or a right-wing extremist, which we already knew very well.  But even worse, that Kilgore sees increased funding for Virginia's schools - teachers, facilities for students, etc. - as "damage."  Referring to Kilgore's stance on this issue, Tim Kaine cited last year's historic budget reform compromise that raised significant money to help balance Virginia's budget and spend needed money on schools and other top priorities.  Kaine charged:

[Kilgore] said it himself.  A budget reform that put historic amounts into our public schools, public safety, prosecutors, transportation, health care. We viewed this as moving Virginia forward. Jerry viewed the steps we made as damage that needed to be undone.

As with all their other proposals, however, which add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending with absolutely no way to pay for it, the Kilgore campaign falls back once again on the old saw about "Virginia's growing economy."  Well, sorry, but isn't this the exact same malarky we've been hearing from our President and our Congress, even as they've turned historic budget surpluses into historic budget deficits and cranked up the national debt, while slashing taxes for the super-rich, doling out tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to the ExxonMobils of the world, and going on a spending spree like there's no tomorrow? 

Oh yeah, that's called "compassionate conservativism," aka "Grover Norquist economics" - compassionate to their big campaign contributors, that is, but not to our teachers, our students, our police officers, our firefighters, and our emergency preparedness capabilities.  Is this the kind of "leadership" we want for Virginia, especially after four great years under Mark Warner and Tim Kaine?  I thought not. 

That's why I oppose Jerry Kilgore and support Tim Kaine, because Kaine is the only major party candidate in this race who is truly "for our futures, for our families."


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