Panicked by Sequestration, McDonnell Advocates Compromise, Including - Gasp! - "Revenue" Increases!

by: lowkell

Tue Jul 31, 2012 at 14:45:12 PM EDT

An analysis done by George Mason University for the Aerospace Industries Association finds more than 2.14 million jobs nationally could be lost if the automatic cuts occur, a process known on Capitol Hill as "sequestration."

Behind California, Virginia stands to lose the most jobs if the cuts take effect. When defense and non-defense cuts are taken into account, the analysis says Virginia would lose 207,571 jobs. Texas, D.C. and Maryland round out the top five for total job losses, with D.C. losing 127,407 defense and non-defense jobs and Maryland losing 114,795 jobs.

McDonnell wants a compromise and says a practical solution would include cuts and revenue increases.

More on the "flip"

Seriously, though, why is T-Bob softening his position and moving towards the burn-at-the-stake Teapublican heresy (at least to Grover Norquist, the Koch brothers, etc.) of "revenue" (aka, "tax") increases? Hard to say, but one possibility is that McDonnell is smarting from having to cancel his hyper-partisan press conference last week at the US Capitol, after the entire Virginia Democratic congressional delegation raised hell over the fact that McDonnell, Cantor, and the rest of Virginia's Republican Congressional delegation, planned to follow the annual, (normally) bipartisan delegation meeting with an unfair, one-sided attack on Democrats (again, this is almost 100% Republicans' fault) over sequestration. The Democrats' boycott of the delegation meeting, and the last-minute cancellation of the press conference (5-10 minutes after the delegation meeting was scheduled to begin, from what I hear) clearly embarrassed McDonnell a great deal.

So, now T-Bob is backpedaling furiously, trying to save Virginia from what would be a devastating impact on our economy next year -- again, thanks to his party's irresponsibility. Remember, no matter what Republicans try to tell you about what rugged individualists and "by their own boostraps"/"did it 100% on my own" people they are, in fact Virginia's economy is more dependent on federal spending and employment (defense and civilian federal, contractor, all the "multipliers" and spinoffs flowing from that employment) that comes from our Commonwealth being located adjacent to Washington, DC. Fascinating how that works, huh? It's amazing what happens to overheated Tea Party rhetoric when it meets reality - poof, there it goes, bye bye, nice knowing you! :)