January Elections, Republicans Dump Trump, and Indexing the Income Tax to Inflation
Republicans are having an identity crisis. Is Donald Trump the leader of the Republican Party? Several prominent Virginians don’t think so. Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears says it’s time to dump Trump--and she's not the only one who seems to be getting off a sinking ship.
Virginia has two special elections on the horizon next January for seats in the General Assembly. In Northern Virginia, voters will fill a seat vacated by former Delegate Mark Keam, who stepped down to take a position in the Biden administration. Voters in Virginia Beach will also fill the vacancy in the state Senate created by Jen Kiggans, who was recently elected to Congress.
Indexing the Income Tax. Virginia is one of 13 states that does not currently index income tax brackets for inflation, and advocates for this reform have been pushing the idea for decades. Some scholars say that's easier said than done.
At the Watercooler: The Virginia Department of Elections delayed approval of new social science education standards provided by the Youngkin administration last week--which had several clear missteps, including referring to Virginia Indians as "America's first immigrants" and omitting mention of President Barack Obama while mentioning President Ronald Reagan five times.
Episode Transcript
Mark Rozell
So right now, everybody's asking the question, where does the Republican Party go? doesn't move beyond Mr. Trump, or does the Trump faction within the Republican Party still hold primary sway in internal Republican Party nomination politics, and we're gonna see a little preview of that in the special elections that are coming up.
Winsome Sears
President Biden has now called us Neanderthals. Let's own that. We are now also Neanderthals.
Michael Pope
On this episode of Pod Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
Republicans dump Trump.
Winsome Sears
A true leader understands that it's time to step off the stage.
Michael Pope
Voters head to the polls again.
Thomas Bowman
And we get nerdy about indexing the income tax to inflation.
Stephen Haner
Inflation is a very wonderful thing if you're the government.
Michael Pope
You are listening to pod Virginia stick around.
I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Thomas Bowman.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, where we're thankful for you, our listeners. So thank you for listening to Pod Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
Yes, thank you, Michael. Do you have any plans for this holiday?
Michael Pope
Eat lots of food. Try not to think about work all that much.
Thomas Bowman
Pet more dogs are mind.
Michael Pope
Dogs, cats. I always make a cranberry sort of side dish like a cranberry condiment that has vinegar and honey, and so I'm gonna go to the market square in old town and get some local vinegars and local honey. It's gonna be fun.
Thomas Bowman
Nice. Nice, we are probably going to my in-law's place, so I'm excited about that.
Michael Pope
Thomas, you see that Pod Virginia has a new review on Apple podcasts?
Thomas Bowman
I did not, Michael, tell me about it.
Michael Pope
Well, this person says, this is the quote, although I live in another state, this podcast is my favorite politics podcast, which says a lot. I got hooked during one of the many nail-biting races in Virginia that I wanted my party to win. I then became a regular listener. The topic's tone and guests really interest me. I guess Virginia politics is my new trivia category now. So thank you for listening to Pod Virginia. And I hope you win all of the trivia games where Virginia politics is, for some reason, a category.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, that was a nice thing to say. Awesome. I'm glad you're listening from wherever it is you are. That's not Virginia. And we should probably give a shout-out to write a review more often. It really does help people find the show.
Michael Pope
Yeah, totally. Please. If you are a listener and you're like Pod Virginia, think about writing a review on Apple podcasts. Okay, let's get to the news. Republicans are having an identity crisis is Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party. Several prominent Virginians don't think so. Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears says it's time to dump Trump. Now I want everyone to remember Winsome Sears, whom we got to know during the campaign last year. I want to replay some audio from the first time we used audio here on this podcast. And this is Winsome Sears introducing herself to voters last year.
Winsome Sears
I'm so glad to be here with all of you. And I'm so glad that you put together this forum so that we have yet another opportunity to make ourselves known to our fellow Republicans, our fellow conservatives, and, as I say, our fellow deplorables, but then we have another word don't we President Biden has now called us Neanderthals. So let's own that. We are now also Neanderthals. How do you like that?
Michael Pope
How do you like that? That was firebrand Winsome Sears, the one that's got an AK 47 strapped to her. Now we've got a different Winsome Sears, the stateswoman presiding over the Senate. After Republicans got thumped in the election, Winsome Sears went on Fox Business and said this.
Winsome Sears
The voters have spoken. And they have said that they want a different leader. And a true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it's time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message.
Michael Pope
Yeah, so this is so interesting. Thomas, we've got Republicans in Virginia distancing themselves from Trump. Delegate Tim Anderson, down in the Hampton Roads area, says Trump running for president is the absolute worst thing that could happen to Virginia state politics. We've got Winsome Sears saying there that true leaders understand when it's time to step off the stage. And then, of course, we've got Amanda Chase defending Trump. And so I find it really interesting, this identity crisis that's currently going on in Republican politics here in Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, this is an interesting one to watch, Michael, and I've heard that the Lieutenant Governor felt like she was breaking a little bit more new ground than she expected to be breaking on that. I don't know if all the Republicans are with her or not in statements like that, but it is smart positioning for the lieutenant governor. Now, she senses that the ship is sinking and that Trump cannot continue and that the survivors, which Sears is clearly a survivor, know how to survive, so she's gonna leave that sinking ship.
Michael Pope
Yeah, Tim Anderson wants off of that ship, too. But Amanda Chase is hanging on.
Thomas Bowman
Amanda Chase is hanging on is your evergreen headline. You can use that over and over again every year.
Michael Pope
Yeah. You know, in fact, this identity crisis with Trump, I would imagine, would figure prominently in the upcoming primary fight there in Chesterfield between Amanda Chase and Glen Sturtevant. Right?
Thomas Bowman
Well, I would think every primary fight right, so there's Trumpism trying to take over the Republican Party, it may or may not have succeeded, but it has not necessarily got the reins of power in all of Virginia. Despite the Republicans being in charge, that's a key nuance to the conversation, Michael.
Michael Pope
All right. Moving on to our next story. The January election, so sometimes it seems like voting never really ends in Virginia, which has two special elections on the horizon for the General Assembly. In Northern Virginia, voters will fill a seat vacated by former delegate Mark Keam who stepped down to take a position in the Biden administration and voters in Virginia Beach. They'll also be filling a vacancy in the state senate created by Jen Kiggans, who was recently elected to Congress. Mark Rozell is Dean of the Schar school at George Mason University.
Mark Rozell
So right now, everybody's asking the question, Where does the Republican Party go? Does it move beyond Mr. Trump? Or does the Trump faction within the Republican Party still hold primary sway in internal Republican Party nomination politics? And we're going to see a little preview of that in the special elections that are coming up.
Michael Pope
That identity crisis we were just talking about. It is going to feature not just in the primary season this upcoming spring but right now, in these special elections, there are two of them. Up in Northern Virginia, there's the Mark Keam seat we got Democrat Holly Seibold, who listeners to this podcast will remember, versus Republican Monique Baroudi. And then down in Virginia Beach, we've got the two candidates, are Democrat Aaron Rouse, he's a member of the Virginia City Council there, and Republican Kevin Adams, who's a retired Navy guy, and it really does seems like the politics are already picking up here for this special election season that we're headed into.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, specifically down in Virginia Beach. I understand that Kevin Adams is attacking Aaron Rouse for his woke politics. And I always thought it was interesting. When you have to campaign on begging people to stay asleep, that seems like you're on the wrong side of the history of perhaps.
Michael Pope
Yeah, so after Aaron Rouse got the Democratic nomination to run in that seat, the Republican Party of Virginia put out a press release. That said that Rouse's candidacy is more evidence of what they call the war on police's utter disregard for law and order that critical comments about comparing law enforcement to modern-day slave traders. So I mean, it does seem like the Republicans want to position the Democrat in that special election as being kind of anti-police radical. And that's a message that might work in Hampton Roads and in Virginia Beach.
Thomas Bowman
That's a really good message for Virginia Beach. So, Michael, I have not looked into the numbers here. I don't know what to expect as far as election prognostications. But as far as messaging goes, that one tends to work against Democrats and, much of the time and suburban districts, especially conservative suburban districts like Virginia Beach.
Michael Pope
All right. Well, let's move on to our next story. Indexing the income tax. Virginia's income tax was created back in 1843. That was a long time ago, and it's been updated many times since that time, but not lately. In fact, Thunderstruck by ACDC was topping the charts the last time Virginia updated its tax brackets.
Thomas Bowman
Thunderstruck. That's some research, Michael. You went deep. Congratulations. That's low-income people holding an increasing share of the bill, a problem that many people are trying to fix by making the tax code more progressive. One suggestion is to index the income tax to inflation. But Terry Clower at George Mason University says. That's easier said than done.
Terry Clower
You then get into the complexity of which inflation measure is the right one to use. And not only that but how do you make a single statewide number that really applies fairly across all jurisdictions?
Michael Pope
So Virginia is one of 13 states that does not currently index the income tax brackets for inflation. And so there's been advocates for this reform; they've been pushing that idea for decades. One of the people that's been pushing for this is Stephen Haner at the Thomas Jefferson Institute.
Stephen Haner
They don't want to give up the money. I mean, inflation is a very wonderful thing if you're the government because your revenue continues to grow.
Michael Pope
Haner, by the way, worked for Walter Stosh way back in the 1980s when they were trying to index the income tax to inflation. And that was unsuccessful way back then. And now we actually might have a situation where this could be on the horizon. Thomas, you'll recall, we talked about that recent JLARC report that talked about making the tax code more progressive. This is one of the recommendations.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, but sorry, I'm taking them back by Steve Haner man, like. What does he mean that governments want inflation? That's how governments lose the status of being a government. They don't want inflation, and they're terrified of inflation. It's why they're fighting it.
Michael Pope
If you don't update the tax brackets, then people make more money, but there's a lower threshold to pay into the brackets.
Thomas Bowman
So updating tax brackets to inflation and having that adjustment done automatically tends to be best practice for a lot of income-based taxes and or sales taxes, too. So anything that's dynamic and is advantageous to the government, specifically state legislatures, to do something like that, because then they wouldn't need to go in and vote to raise taxes, or tax brackets in this case. In reality, they would be lowering taxes for most of us.
Michael Pope
The math might be difficult. You will recall that Virginia has this revenue windfall, a $2 billion state surplus. In the current situation, clearly, there's room for reform. And that's why people are talking about making the tax code more progressive. And there's a whole bunch of things on the menu to do that indexing the tax code is one of them. So we will see if Governor Youngkin decides to put that in his budget. That could be something to look for in December when the governor issues his suggestion for what the budget should be.
Thomas Bowman
It's an interesting idea. But Michael, the important thing is, when do you peg it to inflation? And are you about to peg it to inflation right before everything's about to come down, so you're locking in a high watermark for your tax revenues? The Virginia budget historically has been underfunded. And we have a lot of ideas and a lot of unfunded projects in that budget. And so while yeah, we do have a surplus, that doesn't mean we don't have things that we have earmarked it to spend on already.
Michael Pope
Well, these are discussions that are going to unfold in the next few months as we head into the next general assembly session. All right, let's move over to the water cooler. Who owns history? Thomas, I'm sure you've seen all of the big discussion for last week was the history curriculum. And wow, did the State Department of Education find itself in hot water, and the superintendent ended up saying it was unintentional that Martin Luther King was left out of the history curriculum. And then the Board of Education had this like eight hours of debate, and they declined to advance this document. And what the heck is going on with teaching history in Virginia?
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, they injected ideology into what was supposed to be a scientific process. This process started multiple years ago, under the prior administration, and they wanted to update the standards that they were teaching in schools to make sure that they reflected modern understandings and current science. And then the Youngkin administration came in and just threw a wrench into all of that and put a bunch of unqualified people into positions where they were able to influence this document and what you see as the result of all of that work. They're taking a jackhammer to the government of Virginia and producing things like this, and I'm glad that the Board of Education did not end up adopting these bills, but they turned what was supposed to be something beautiful into a poison. And it was so incredibly frustrating to watch this happen.
Michael Pope
Well, you mentioned science. So history is a social science. But in some ways, it's more of an art than a science. And it's one that's always changing too. Because as different things happen in the world, views of the past change. I'll give a good example of this. During the Great Depression, people started thinking differently about history and started seeing economic influences that had not previously been apparent or things that people had been thinking about. So people in the 1930s and 40s started looking at the past in a very different way. And they should have, right, so there is a whole study of the changing way that historians look at history. It's called historiography. And these are really important questions about who owns history.
Thomas Bowman
And also important to point out that Virginia doesn't get to write the textbooks. When you are in Texas, you get to write textbooks, and because of your sheer market demand, when you're in California, you get to write the textbooks. The same reason is that you're buying so many of them that you influence the entire market and what's available to everybody else. Virginia is not. We don't have that population pool. So there's no demand that we can induce relatively to what's already there. This was a really bad idea. And this just served to undermine the process because now Democrats are going to have to eventually come back in. It's going to take years to undo that work. And they're gonna have to come back in and try to fix all this.
Michael Pope
Yeah, I thought it was interesting that it seems to me like this was a rushed job that was probably not done with the care that it should have been done. So you know, Anne Holton was one of the speakers at that Board of Education meeting. And she asked why Ronald Reagan was mentioned five times, but Barack Obama was not in the document. And that's because it, it had a perspective it was, you know, the people who put it together, obviously thought Reagan was very important and worth mentioning, and Obama was not.
Thomas Bowman
That's the problem the policy blinders these people who don't have any clue how the world works outside of their narrow vision of it.
Michael Pope
Well, they also called indigenous people America's first immigrants, and wow, that one is dumb.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. And you know, what's interesting about that, one is that Virginia Indians like to be called Virginia Indians, people from other states will try to correct you and say, It's indigenous people now or First Nations. Virginia Indians, when they come and lobby the government, you ask the awkward question of, like, okay, like, what is the preferred terminology? They will tell you every time Virginia Indians, and maybe that's generational, but that's who talks to the government.
Michael Pope
Well, you know, what they don't want us to describe them is America's first immigrants. Who thought of that? Come on. What kind of thinking do you have to have to call it indigenous people, Virginia Indians, America's first immigrants who think of this?
Thomas Bowman
Come on, guys. I don't know what to say, man. So bad over
Michael Pope
A perfect message for Thanksgiving.
Thomas Bowman
It's a mess. I heard it. Let's leave it there, Michael. Thanks for listening. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
