Virginia’s Democratic lawmakers passed the commonwealth’s budget, but they publicly surmised that their plans could be derailed by President Donald Trump’s administration and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s moves to drastically decrease the federal workforce.
With bipartisan support, Virginia’s House of Delegates and Senate voted 81-18 and 37-3, respectively, to approve changes to the two-year state budget, which included increases in the standard income tax deduction, bonuses for teachers and state employees, and increases in funding for state education. Democratic leaders, however, are worried that the state will soon need to change some of those provisions to support laid-off workers.
“We’ll see how long this budget is able to hold. These surpluses are kind of ephemeral,” said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Scott A. Surovell. He predicted that the extra money commonwealth legislators have could go away as the Trump administration continues to slash federal funding.
Democrats said changing the budget was necessary as Virginia is the top state for federal contracting as of 2023, with $106 billion awarded. However, Virginia Republicans have since pushed back on that notion despite enough Republicans getting on board to pass it with a bipartisan supermajority.
“The things that the president is doing — that he promised to do — are certainly going to have impacts,” Republican House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said in an interview. “But I think there are going to be a lot of positive impacts here. There may be some disruption, but, you know, the hyperbole we’re seeing around it is pretty remarkable.”
Virginia Republicans have also said the budget proposal was never intended to do anything but score political points for Democrats there ahead of fall elections for the House of Delegates and the gubernatorial race.
“It was almost like this was a simple, crass political ploy, that these workers were being used for talking points,” Republican state Sen. Mark J. Peake said Thursday.
Another proposed clause in the budget expanded resources for employees laid off from their federal government jobs or government contract jobs. In Virginia, unemployment benefits are usually only made available to workers whose employers pay the state and federal unemployment taxes that fund the system.
Republican state Sen. David R. Suetterlein supported the bill but said Democrats should back off the emergency clause. He said that while that passed in the House of Delegates, it could face roadblocks in the state Senate because the emergency provision needs a four-fifths supermajority in both chambers to be passed.
“It’s just perplexing to me why, when there’s a serious concern, why you would put the highest hurdle in front of it,” he said. “It almost seems that it’s not actually intended to pass.”
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Some Democrats appeared to concur with Suetterlein’s point. Virginia Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman L. Louise Luca said that could be funded later this year, as she expects an emergency session to take place to adjust the state budget to account for major spending cuts affecting the federal workforce.
“We can always come back,” she said last week. “I don’t want to leave anybody behind. Things are going to get a whole lot tougher before they get better. And we need to be prepared to take care of everybody.”