I just look at his proposed spending on non-state entities last year, and I feel ill. Propose wasteful spending, and then a tax increase to pay for it. This guy is a real piece of work.

Consider this excerpt from the Richmond Times Dispatch, October 21, 2003, Page B4:

Sen. John H. Chichester, R-Stafford, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, suggested to members of the Virginia Municipal League that the General Assembly must come to terms with the state’s budget problems soon and find money to invest in basic services if the state is to have success luring businesses to the commonwealth and giving residents a high quality of life.

“It is the education, public safety, Medicaid and transportation components of our infrastructure, to name only the most obvious, that keep us moving forward as a progressive state,” he said before about 500 league members gathered in the Hotel Roanoke. “And quite frankly, I see very little forward motion these days.”

Well, “progressive” is code-speak for Socialist. He wants Virginia to become more socialist — or more Marxist. No thanks.

Chichester is a man obsessed with power. And he can behave in the fashion that he has because no one has stood up to him. Sure, they’d probably lose, but at least give the voters a choice. Send a message to this man that the voters are getting tired of his ways.

Chichester is about as far from being a fiscal conservative as I can possibly imagine. He has never opposed a tax increase as far as I can tell, and often is the one proposing it. He seems entirely satisfied with state spending that’s growing far beyond the rate of inflation and population growth. And this time, he’s tried several times to unravel a compromise with his substitute bill that would raise the sales tax and take the current surplus revenue and use it to increase general fund spending. His voting record in no way reflects any concordance with the Republican majority.

You tell me how this squares with limited government, fiscal responsibility and economic prosperity, because I don’t get it at all. This guy is an abomination.

There’s probably a legitimate policy debate to be had about whether Chichester’s fiscal views are optimal in modern circumstances. But the pols in Richmond are avoiding that debate in favor of just slapping a label on him, a label that doesn’t make any sense at all. Chichester’s problem in the current Virginia political scheme is that he’s an old-fashioned fiscal conservative who understands how the state budget works (and doesn’t work) at a time when the legislature has a considerable number of members who lack that understanding and who got where they are by publicly hitching their wagons to the single star of inane oversimplifications about tax policy. Chichester is like the sole proprietor of a small business who won’t spend money until he knows where it’s coming from, won’t take from one account to pay for items in another account, won’t borrow, and is unwilling to try sleight of hand stuff that hides the fact that the goverment is going put its hand in your pocket no matter what you call it. That really gets up the nose of the borrow-and-spend types and the “call-it-a-fee,-not-a-tax” crowd that populates the General Assembly. He’s a stubborn cuss and he sits on top of the levers that make things happen in the Senate. I’m sure it’s very frustrating for folks, but there’s nothing particularly un-Republican about it.