Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger and top Virginia Democrats are aiming to lower costs through programs with little impact on the state budget, they said in a press conference Thursday.
The approach underlines that Democrats are uneasy about the commonwealth's revenue prospects, despite a rosier picture depicted by outgoing Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin earlier this week.
"We recognize that there will be real fiscal challenges that the Commonwealth is facing, which is why many of these efforts to lower costs for Virginians either don't utilize general fund dollars or are cost neutral," Spanberger said as she announced 17 policy goals on energy, health care and housing.
"Ultimately, if we are planning for the challenges that, broadly speaking, we see on the horizon, then we'll be well positioned to contend with them," said Spanberger, when asked about Virginia's revenue outlook. "But it is even more essential, if we see economic challenges at a larger macro scale, that we are taking these actions."
Youngkin's $72 billion budget proposal, released Wednesday, forecast more revenue for the state than predictions released by state legislators.
You know we could raise taxes on the wealthy...
Raising taxes on the wealthy isnt immediately going to help with affordability
You’re right. It would take decades of it to even get us out of deficit spending. Many Americans love subsidies, entitlements, and government programs- but hate taxes. And fail to see how the two are related. I’m all for the wealthy paying more in taxes, but honestly even taxing them all into bankruptcy would barely make a dent in a $30+ trillion debt. You’d figure that all the self-professed intellectuals we have would be able to figure out a solution to essentially an intake/output problem, but here we are…
We know what works, we just don't want to implement those strategies. One of the first being taxing the hell of of the obscenly rich.
you could tax all the american billionaires at 100% their net worth and it would only fund the federal government for 1 year. of course in order to pay that they would have to liquidate everything and the next year we would have no billionaires, and no more tax income.
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you're right, the combined net worth of all 8 billionaires that live in virginia could fund virginia for less than 10 months.
as for the talking point claim, you don't see that fact as a demonstration that taxing the rich more doesn't actually solve the issue?
That talking point is a logical fallacy. Who would tax anyone at 100%? The entire premise is bullshit designed to shift a conversation into yet another worn out boomer conservative line: “lower taxes on the wealthy stimulates the economy,” which has never worked, and never will.
You don’t debate in good faith, you pull out bullshit conservative tropes.
Is this a debate?
It doesn't make sense to tax someone based on net worth, that's the point. The billions they are worth aren't liquid, they don't actually have billions. Even if all of their net worth was liquid and you took all of it it would not make a dent in our fiscal problems. So when people say tax the rich it makes no sense because at whatever tax rate they propose, it will be less than 100% and we already know that even taking all their shit wouldn't help. It doesn't address the problem.
The problem is the massive spending on bloated programs that shouldn't even exist, funded though massive amounts of money printing. The bankers get the free money first and get to spend it before the inflated currency ripples through the rest of the economy leading to higher prices that we get stuck with, this is literally the cause of the massive wealth gap.
So if I have a bunch of CDs, I don’t actually have that wealth and, even better, I shouldn’t be asked to pay taxes because my money is ‘illiquid’ abd locked up in CDs?
Lolololo
The goal isn’t to get one single group to pay for everything. The goal is to get those parasites to pay a rate of proportionate return as a kindergarten teacher or construction worker.
I wish I could get the people who use this absurdly childish gotcha to see how silly they look everytime they move their broken pawn to pretend Checkmate.
Not to mention, taxing the rich large amounts won’t really help if it’s just a single state. Companies move on other states all the time for lower taxes. Virginia economy is already suffering, going that route with no other plan to back it up would be suicide
Wrong, as usual. We always hear this and it’s always wrong.
https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/report-massachusetts-home-to-more-millionaires-despite-new-millionaires-tax
If “the wealthy” thought for one minute that was gonna happen, they’d have thrown their money behind the opposition. The areas that voted most strongly for Spanberger are, by and large, the most affluent areas of the state. I seriously doubt they did that with the expectation that she would increase their taxes significantly.
Raising millionaire income taxes like 1% is not going to be noticed.A lot of these people believe wealthier (including themselves!) should pay more taxes.
I believe that the supposed flight from CA -> TX, that largely didn't actually happen, is proof blue states have pricing power with their taxes.
Blue states can stand in for a lot of the gaps in the Federal govt now. They can build a coalition of states to innovate new services and regulations in areas like health care. Those of us lucky to live here will be OK paying more given the higher standard of living.
Mamdani made a really good point… they’re putting more into opposition than they are taxes.
The richest people who would be affected the most did not vote for Spanberger, let's be honest.
You’re right about some very wealthy individuals- but there aren’t enough of them to have significantly affect the outcome. There’s something like 270K millionaires in VA (which is a lot! It’s 8% of the population) mostly concentrated in NOVA. A big number, but not enough to overcome the votes of the upper middle class vote that hugely went to Spanberger. But I get the point you’re making.
The wealthiest parts of the State voted blue. These parts are where the wealthiest live.
I think you may misunderstand how populated the top 1-5% of top earners are in VA.
Are you saying they’re living in poor conservative counties?
Edit: here is the list of VA’s wealthiest families. You can search more and fine they they live up in NoVA.
https://www.axios.com/local/richmond/2025/04/11/virginia-billionaires-new-2025-forbes-list
Edit2: another lists that states where they live: https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/list-virginias-richest-billionaires-in-2025/amp/
No, I'm saying the total number of peope who would be affected by an increase in taxes of the top 1-5% of earners would be low. Not where they live.
Ok, however the wealthy live in NoVA. I only listed the billionaires. Again, most of the millionaires live in NoVa which voted blue. Someone said they would’ve not voted for more taxes o themselves which is false.
I think we agree -- I was stating that it's false to think these areas would turn on Spanberger if her admin raised taxes on the richest.
NoVA went blue, true, that's a given, but that doesn't mean that the richest people there supported her. Basically meaning, go ahead and raise taxes, it wouldn't hurt Dems in that area.
Nobody wants to pay more taxes for themselves, but our income tax brackets are idiotic.
The top bracket is for income above $17,001 per year. Full time minimum wage is $25,800 in Virginia. So any full time job is in the top bracket!? The guy working the fries in a Galax fast food spot is in the same bracket as NoVA finance bros making seven figures? Come on...
That doesn't make things affordable.
Affordability isn’t actually the goal. Catharsis is the goal. I really wish this weren’t the case. It would be nice if people on either side were serious about fixing anything. But they really aren’t.
Go big! Take a look at Massachusett's "millionaires tax."
95% of Republicans bitching about "fiscal responsibility" is just to undermine any substantial Democratic policy.
Its free to force cities to build more housing and commercial space. Those land rents are massive drags on both economic output and revenue
Only comment in here that is actually about affordability and not about fiscal policy
Literally the only thing we should be focusing on right now. When rent is $2000 a month, and we make things that aren’t rent cheaper through subsidies, our rent will just increase to match that. The most inelastic of goods and we just continue to ignore the necessity of building more housing.
Exactly. All cities, and counties for that matter, should implement punitive tax rates on properties with derelict buildings. Unimproved property purchased for “buy and hold” investing should also pay higher rates.
These taxes should be earmarked for infrastructure projects such as expansion of fiber optic internet services via nonprofit co-ops like Firefly, water treatment systems, and power grid upgrades via existing nonprofit co-ops.
The state shouldn't be forcing localities to build. That should be up to each city and the residents in them.
We tried that for thr last 30+ years. And now we have a massive shortage everywhere
So convince your locality to build more, the state doesn't get to force it.
Easier for nimbys to gain regulatory capture of locally controlled building than statewide.
That's a funny way to describe local residents having a say in how their town is run.
Local landlords having a say in new housing is literally regulatory capture
If they're local then they're residents who are entitled to a say, like every other resident.
That was the sentiment of the last many decades and all I created was this shortage
If that's what residents wanted for their towns then so be it. It's called a democracy.
why the fuck don't we raise some god damn taxes on the wealthy that sounds real nice right about now
So your suggestion is to increase property taxes on homes worth less than 2 million and get rid of the 20k credit part of the car tax?
/s
Classic establishment Dems, let's just tinker around the edges while the rich continute to exploit and hord wealth and errode our democracy.
VA Dems were GIVEN the election and are acting like their dated neo-liberal strategies won them the state.
Folks, we are losing our civil liberities one by one and are being squeezed to death economically. All while centrist-capitalists like Spanberger want to adjust the formula just enough to reassure themselves they are not the "bad guys", completely unwilling to meet the moment and make the substantive changes needed.
edit: words
I don't think its fair to say establishment democrats were simply GIVEN the general election. Maybe you are thinking of the primary? The one Spanberger won by default since all the progressive left champions better prepared to meet the moment didn't bother running.
No, I think it is. Earle-Sears ran such a bad campaign, and is just not likeable in any way (for a whole host of reasons). We could have ran a mop aganist her and won.
Great!
Create an augmented rental property tax the more rooms you fill the lower your rate add subsidies if they cap rent increases and aren’t slumlords throw in restructuring the agricultural subsidies to incentivize greenhouses hydroponics and regenerative farming to increase food diversity and competition add in co-ops to compete with corpos and add cumulative fines for repeat business offenders use extra revenue on education heat pumps for homes to reduce energy bills and ban ai centers entirely
I’m a Republican. If they actually focus on affordability—not punishing success, not making it even harder to run a profitable business, not race/gender/religious grievances, not “correcting” people’s parenting “mistakes,” not looking out for the poor unfortunate criminals—then I will be both (a) surprised and (b) impressed. They have a genuine opportunity to sway people. Will they do it?
Would love to see the price per kwh of the solar facilities that include battery storage. I'd hazard a guess it isn't as rosy as the other charts.
Pumped hydro is the best way to go for energy storage. Don’t know why people keep chasing after expensive batteries.
You're essentially trading the dollar cost for land cost with pumped hydro. It definitely wins if you're already close to natural water features but otherwise you have to decide whether storage capacity per acre matters more than dollar cost.
Yeah that’s true. I was pretty much agreeing with your point though that if you are only looking at the cost of solar and wind as the panels by themselves it’s only half of the equation.