Gary Silverman
Columnist
Last week we read about the General Assembly’s work this term, including the passage of several bills and a new budget. It must have been fun to decide how to best spend the current budget surplus – not an everyday occurrence for government. Remember that this surplus resulted from Virginia’s strong economy over the past few years – let’s certainly hope that this can continue. This current budget had overwhelming bipartisan support in the legislature and has now gone to the governor for further review.
Particularly notable in this budget is significant additional public school funding including salary increases and bonuses. Taxpayers will have new tax breaks and one-time income tax rebates. Another $50 million will be available in response to Hurricane Helene. Good things for sure.
Perhaps trying to put a bit of a damper on such good news, lamented in last week’s article were Democrat initiatives that passed but are “too extreme,” with their fate now with the governor. Last week I presented data showing that the largest threats to our kids are gun violence and vehicular accidents and provided some data showing that we fall badly behind other developed countries in protecting our kids. The bills criticized as “extreme” directly address these real threats! For example, one bill would ban assault weapons. The reason why this bill was passed was to reduce the threat of gun violence – addressing directly a major problem in Virginia. Of course, some will argue that this approach will not work and that it is unconstitutional. This column is not a good place to argue this point – but it is a good place to point out that alternative bills to practically reduce shooting deaths were not promoted. It is not okay just to criticize the political opposition party’s solution to a problem without having any suggestions on how to do better! Status quo is not okay – we need to save our kids from violence in their schools. Would anyone argue with that?
Similarly criticized was a bill that would help give pregnant girls a safe abortion option. Of course, many people think abortions are wrong and want to stop them completely. Yet we know that prohibiting abortions usually results in more deaths and suffering in infants and older children – there are a lot of data that show this. For just one example, after Texas passed a law in 2021 virtually prohibiting abortions, the very next year Texas had a 13 percent increase in infant mortality. Those folks opposing abortions don’t want more infant and children’s deaths – yet that is what happened in Texas. Any attempt for government restrictions on abortions really needs to be accompanied by government actions to help infants and children. Unfortunately, that it not currently happening in those places where abortions are not allowed – yet no one wants to hurt children! Wonderful would be political suggestions that protect and nurture our children. Criticizing the ideas of others rather than offering alternative reasonable suggestions simply just breeds animosity, rather than good ideas.
It would be great to move away from culture wars – and instead concentrate on practical solutions to real problems. Remember, the main threats to our children are gun and vehicular violence, and our childhood mortality rate is very high compared to that of other developed countries. Perhaps wishful thinking is that our legislators focus on those problems that are most important, rather than those that continue to stoke culture wars. Yet, the recent budget agreements that help our schools certainly show that the political parties can work together – let’s hope that moving forward we will see more bipartisan work on issues that now often simply divide us while leaving our children at risk.
