Vetoed offshore drilling ban until more laws & facts known
RHETORIC: Gilmore: "Your Secretary of Finance John Bennett sent you a letter and reported in February [of 2004] and said 'Guess what? Revenues are climbing'...Why didn't you tell the people of
Virginia what you knew and what you were being told so that tax increase could have gone forward with all the facts available and probably would have never been enacted.
Why didn't you tell the people of Virginia what you were being told by your own people?"
REALITY: The update to the Joint Finance Committee letters are public, e-mailed to all
General Assembly members, and posted on the web just after the Governor receives it. The monthly revenue reports also are widely reported by the media
Gilmore promised car tax repeal at $620M; but it cost $2B
RHETORIC: Gilmore said, "It is not true that the car tax cost three times as much [in its repeal as Warner said it would when he was running for Governor]."
REALITY: While running for governor in 1997, Gilmore promised Virginia voters that his car tax
repeal would cost no more than $620 million and would not require any cuts in core services. By the time Gilmore left, he cut millions from necessary programs and the car tax repeal was creating a nearly $2 billion hole in Virginia's budget. [AP, 4/30/04
Source: 2008 VA Senate Debate: analysis by Warner campaign
Jul 19, 2008
2003 tax package raised some taxes & removed low-income tax
The Commonwealth of Opportunity Tax Reform package Governor Warner presented in November 2003 was carefully and responsibly constructed to make Virginia's tax code fairer.
The proposal raised some taxes, including Virginia's lowest-in-the-nation
cigarette tax and income taxes on the very highest wage earners. It included a modest increase in the state sales tax, even as it cut the sales tax on food by 1.5 cents and removed 140,000 lower-income Virginians from the tax rolls altogether.
Source: Campaign website, www.markwarner2008.com, "Issues"
Mar 9, 2008
Cut taxes for at least 65% of Virginians
Our budget and tax reform plan makes Virginia 's tax system fairer. It does this by lowering the income tax for most Virginians; by finally keeping the promise of the car tax cut and the food tax cut; by ending the estate tax for farms & small businesses
and by closing the loopholes that allow many major corporations to avoid paying their fair share. It adds one penny to the sales tax, and it creates a new income tax bracket, affecting less than 8% of upper-income Virginians.
Source: State of the Commonwealth address to the General Assembly
Jan 14, 2004
