The editors discussed today how Virginia Democrats are wildly over their skis in advancing a startlingly progressive agenda now that they have retaken power after four years of Glenn Youngkin’s administration.
From recklessly ending law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration authorities to enshrining a constitutional right to abortion, there are many proposals by Virginia lawmakers to fear. What’s most revealing to me, however, is that virtually none of the policy ideas that Democrats are pushing out the gate would do anything to address voters’ greatest concern: affordability.
It was the issue of rising costs, above all else, that Governor Abigail Spanberger ran on to crush Youngkin’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, in last year’s election. It was the cudgel that Democrats wielded to flip 13 Republican seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates, winning a 64-to-36 majority. And yet, now that they’re in power, the Democrats have no idea of how to address affordability.
For City Journal, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Judge Glock reviewed Governor Spanberger’s suite of “affordability” pledges and found that every one of her policies would not reduce, but increase costs for most Virginia households. Her guiding principle seems to be cross-subsidization, or driving up “expenses for one group of consumers in order to benefit another group deemed more deserving.”
Spanberger’s proposals to bar health insurers from charging smokers higher premiums and limit their use of prior authorizations would merely spread out health-care costs from enrollees in poor health to all policyholders. She wants to prohibit the managers of prescription benefit plans from offering special discounts and rebates to affiliated pharmacies, thus raising the cost of filling prescriptions.
In response to high energy prices, Spanberger wants to double down on the source of the problem — unworkable climate mandates — by requiring utilities to invest in expensive battery storage solutions to bail out unreliable green energy projects. The cost of that equipment will be covered by ratepayers. She plans to expand tenant protections and “inclusionary” zoning rules to help low-income renters, foisting added costs on landlords to be passed on to everyone else. Beyond her regulatory program, the governor wants to use taxpayer money to further subsidize health insurance plans on the faulty Obamacare marketplace and to pay for more “affordable housing.”
As for Democrats in the state legislature, their economic proposals are limited to imposing new sales taxes on popular goods and services, squeezing residents and businesses for additional revenue, and banning gas-powered leaf blowers. Because, why not?
Republicans have plenty of their own problems on the affordability issue, but the traditional conservative approach of removing government barriers to mutually beneficial economic transactions and letting citizens allocate their money as they see fit is still what works best. The GOP has strayed from that governing philosophy in the current populist age, much to its detriment. But all that Democrats have ever known are regulatory mandates and taxpayer subsidization.
These policies cannot reduce the underlying cost of providing goods and services, as such interventions do nothing to boost productivity or lower transaction costs. They can only obscure underlying costs by shifting the burden around. Virginia voters should demand better than that.