Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin publicly boasted in victory this week, claiming credit for steering the Old Dominion state to a $1 billion budget surplus.
In his annual Joint Finance Committee address before Virginia’s relevant legislative committees, Youngkin, a Republican, explained how the growth in most surrounding states in recent years has made them attractive to longtime Virginians.
Youngkin began by greeting the Democratic committee chairs, House Appropriations Chairman Luke Torian of Prince William, House Finance Chair Vivian Watts of Fairfax and Senate President L. Louise Lucas, who serves as the Senate Finance chair.
“Our neighbors in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida Rapidly growing“A lot of Virginians are choosing to go there instead of here,” Youngkin said.
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Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin speaks at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Majority Policy Conference at the Washington Hilton on June 22, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Most of those states have cut taxes, but Virginia has “laid back” since the year the last Republican governor, Robert McDonnell, left office, he said.
“Right now, across the country, we’re winning some states and we’re losing some states,” Youngkin said.
The governor, who faces one-term limits in the Old Dominion state but is considered a favorite by some in a future presidential election, said there will be economic winners and losers in each state.
“The states that are succeeding in growing jobs, population and opportunity, and the states that are not.”
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Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin campaigned in Amherst, Virginia on October 28, 2021. (Charles Crates)
Youngkin said these “winning states” are “dominant[ting]”National Map in Terms of Economic Growth and Fiscal Management.”
He said most of the “losing states” have budget deficits, but that Virginia and the other southeastern states he mentioned – all but one of which are Republican-led – are in better positions.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Youngkin said Virginia is proving that tax cuts are a “catalyst for record job creation.” [and] “Business growth”
“This strategy is working,” he said. “Virginia is demonstrating that once-laggard states can rise to the front by ‘investing’ in tax cuts and understanding that the money belongs to working people, not the government.”
The Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, February 9, 2019. (Drew Ungerer/Getty Images)
The governor said he plans to use the surplus to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on improvements to the busy Interstate 81 corridor, which connects trucking hubs in the Northeast with several transcontinental highways and serves as a 323-mile artery for much of the Midcontinent’s commerce.
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About $90 million of the surplus will also be donated to the Virginia Military Family and Dependents Fund.
But the governor warned against squandering the new revenue, saying something that has happened in Virginia in the past “will happen again.”
