Filling in for Jimmy, guest host Congressman Randy Forbes and the Speaker discussed the lessons Washington can learn from Virginia:

• The no-tax-increase way from a $4.2 Billion deficit to a balanced budget
• How to foster a pro-business, pro-jobs economy

As well as the sure-fire method to stop job creation—create uncertainty for business with the Obama/Congressional Democrat unclear agenda of bloated government, new taxes, and increased regulation.

During his tenure as Speaker, Howell has led the way in reducing Virginia's per capita expenditures in the legislature from 40th in the Nation to 46th. And, with Senate Democrats running up a tab on the other side of the Capital, you can't expect much better than that.

See the full press release at the Speaker's website.

The State Budget contained many of the key accomplishments of the session, including rejection of former Governor Kaine's 17 percent income tax hike, and a reduction in state spending for the first time in recent memory. In fact, the 2010-2012 Biennial Budget returns general fund spending to 2006 levels.

The House Republican Caucus followed its long-time principle—no reward for missing a deadline—by proposing House Resolution 40, which the House adopted today. The Resolution eliminates the $135per diem payment for delegates during the extension of the 60-day session.

The Senate, which already gives its members a more generous $169 per diem, took no similar action.

This is the same Senate that dragged its feet on negotiating the state budget with the House. Having come up with over-inflated revenue estimates, the Senate conferees would not engage with the House Budget Conferees in serious discussion about revenue last weekend.

Having created a delay by its inaction, the Senators insist on reaping a reward for missing the budget deadline established on December 11 (See House Joint Resolution 9).

Legislators who live outside the Richmond metro area receive per diem payments to cover the expenses of living in Richmond during the legislative session. Under the Federal tax code, per diem in excess of actual costs can be kept as tax-free income.

UPDATE: See what others are saying about the Senate's action: Too Conservative, Bearing Drift, SwacGirl at Virginia Virtucon

Check out Sherwood's speech on YouTube.

A transcript of Delegate Sherwood's speech follows:

Mr. Speaker, people often say "you should put your money where your mouth is." Well, this body has for years placed a significant emphasis on public safety. So, today, I would like to tell you about the House Budget that you adopted last Thursday and its commitment to public safety. The amendments you adopted restored funding for Sheriffs and Commonwealth's Attorneys, initiated State Police basic trooper schools, and maintained support for the HB 599 program.

The introduced budget submitted in December reduced funding for sheriffs by $47.1 million in FY 2011 and $59.8 million in FY 2012, equaling about a 13.4 percent biennial reduction in the level of funding previously provided to sheriffs, who, as many of you know, provide the primary law enforcement services in many communities.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of our adopted House budget because it restores $41.2 million in funding for sheriffs in FY2011 and $40.7 million in FY 2012. These restorations mean that instead of the 13.4 percent biennial reduction proposed for sheriffs, the House budget includes only a 3.2 percent reduction.

This additional funding includes restoration of the 1-to-1,500 law enforcement ratios, the elimination of across-the-board reductions for sheriffs and regional jails, and the restoration of the retirement and group life insurance payments provided for sheriffs and regional jail personnel.

And, Mr. Speaker, in addition to the funding provided for sheriffs and regional jails, the budget you adopted also restores funding for another important component of the Commonwealth's public safety, your Commonwealth's attorneys, who ensure the safety of our citizens by placing criminals behind bars.

The introduced budget reduced the existing funding for Commonwealth's attorneys by $10.9 million each year, or 16.5 percent. In contrast, the House budget restores &7.5 million in each year to our Commonwealth's attorney's offices. this restoration reduces the proposed 16.5 percent reduction in each year to no more than 5 precent.

Another important component to ensuring the Commonwealth's public safety is our State Police troopers. Included among the reductions contained in the introduced budget was pushing off funding for State Police basic trooper schools, allowing only one to proceed in the current biennium.

Again, I'm proud of this House budget because, at a time when more than 300 State Police positions are vacant and more than 250 troopers could retire, this budget provides funding to ensure that new troopers will continue to respond both to the needs of our citizens and other law enforcement agencies.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the House budget maintains funding for the HB 599 program. While you know funding for this program increases and decreases with general fund revenue growth, the House budget we adopted ensures that $150 million each year is available to support those localities with police departments. Our local police departments answer the call every day, protecting citizens and addressing emergencies.

As you can see, the body's continuing commitment to public safety is once again affirmed in the budget we adopted last Thursday. We should all be very proud of that fact.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Check out Landes' speech on YouTube.

The transcript of his remarks follows:

Ladies and Gentlemen of the House, as you know, I'm a newbie to the budget conference this year.  But, one thing I do know already is that we have to figure out how many dollars we have to spend before we can actually spend those dollars.

Today, I’d like to talk about where we are relative to the revenues in the state budget.

As you know, we’ve had a challenge the last few years with whether the state revenue projections are on target and have really been accurate related to dollars coming in to the Commonwealth and making sure that we account for those in our state budget.

The last few years, unfortunately, those have not always been on target.

In Fiscal Year 2008, the final revenue projections barely met our forecast, and we ended the year only $5 million above the forecast.

Last year, even after pulling down the state revenue forecast by $821 million in the mid-2009 Session re-forecast, Governor Kaine's forecast overestimated revenues by $299 million.  Unfortunately, the Commonwealth ended the year with a substantial budget shortfall.

Thankfully, in the House, we had the foresight to insist the budget conferees set aside a state revenue reserve of $150 million, which did help the state close the books at the end of the year to offset the impact of the FY 2009 shortfall.

This year, the House incorporated Governor McDonnell's three-year upward adjustment in the state revenue mid-session reforecast, totaling $200 million.  But, the House also set aside an additional $165 million for deposit into the Commonwealth’s Revenue Stabilization (Rainy Day) Fund to help offset any potential setbacks that we may experience because of the weak economy. While all of us are pleased that the economy is showing some signs of improvement, we also know that economists believe that the economy is not recovering as quickly as we've seen in the past and that the recovery will probably be slow and steady, not like the robust recoveries that we're used to seeing in past years.

Now, that's what the House of Delegates did this year in its budget relative to revenues.

But, as Paul Harvey always used to say, “here’s the rest of the story" – regarding what our Senate colleagues have done with their budget.

Mr. Speaker, in contrast to the House, the Senate not only adopted and spent the entire $200 million recommended by Governor McDonnell, but also, in essence, revised the state revenue forecast and added an additional $247 million in revenues over the three-year period.

In particular, the Senate revisions included an amount of $69.1 million in the current year when we still trail the forecast with only four months remaining until the end of this fiscal year on June 30.

That's concerning.

In addition to spending the $247 million in additional (or what I would consider pumped-up) revenues, the Senate eliminated $40 million that Governor Kaine had included in House Bill 30 as a deposit for the Rainy Day Fund.  And, they spent that $40 million too.

In my estimation, ladies and gentlemen of the House, the House and Senate budget conferees have to deal with the revenue issue.  This is the most important thing we're going to have to do in the near term.

It's very difficult and very troubling when we're going into this conference with the fact that not only did the Senate build their budget on what I consider faulty and dangerous revenue assumptions, but they've also built a lot of the spending they've done in their budget on false promises, because those dollars just are not there.

What the Senate has done by spending more than every cent that we've tried to set aside in the past, the Senate also has raised expectations that many programs will not be cut.

The House took the more prudent course to assess our revenues, spend them accordingly and make the cuts necessary to meet our constitutional obligation of balancing our state budget.

Ladies and gentleman, I hope you will join me in thanking the members of the House Appropriations Committee on doing the prudent thing and not just trying to puff up the Commonwealth’s revenue estimates.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Check out O'Bannon's speech on YouTube.

The transcript of his speech follows:

Mr. Speaker, I don't get up very often, but I would like today to take just a minute or two to talk to the body about the House budget and the health care portions of it.

Mr. Speaker, being on the Appropriations Committee this year has been a bit of a challenge. We've listened carefully to the citizens and advocates. We've attended public hearings all over the state, including a six-hour session here the Monday before session began. We heard eloquent testimony about the importance of the healthcare safety net, and the valuable role that home care services play for our disabled citizens.

Mr. Speaker, we then had the challenge of balancing our budget within the limitations brought on by an ongoing recession. We also had to respect the will of the citizens of Virginia who voted for a new Governor who ran on a platform of not raising taxes on the citizens of Virginia. Subsequent to that, both bodies of this Assembly have confirmed that we will continue to offer car tax relief and will not enact a general tax increase.

I’ve patiently listened to members from the other side of the aisle—folks that I respect a lot—the gentleman from Arlington, Mr. Hope, the gentleman from Fairfax, Mr. Plum—I've heard them stand and lament the cuts that we’ve been required to make to accomplish a balanced budget this session. Disappointingly, Mr. Speaker, none of those speeches was accompanied by recommendations as to where we might get funds from other parts of the budget to make things balance.

Mr. Speaker, one thing I’ve learned down here is that the needs of our Commonwealth are endless, but the resources of our Commonwealth are not—they are finite. And they are a little less this year than they have been.

What we've had to do this year is to make those very difficult decisions to allow us to produce a balanced budget. And, one that's based on realistic revenues and not funny money.

While here, we all deal with the advocates who are so passionate about their causes. But those who elected us to come here—to balance the budget, to complete our work on time, and not to raise their taxes—don't have so many lobbyists or folks walking the halls down here. We have to stand up for them.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud of our House Health and Human Resources budget. We tried to treat everyone fairly. We tried to listen to the advocates. But, we did not accept some of the recommendations of former Gov. Kaine, such as freezes to the home and community-based waivers. Those are the things that keep folks in their own home and away from institutions.

We did not take recommendations to freeze the FAMIS program. That's the program for the children of low-income families. We did listen to the advocates and chose to lower the eligibility criteria slightly for the FAMIS program, allowing 3,306 elderly and disabled citizens access to the waiver program. And it will allow new enrollees into the FAMIS program to get care.

We did restore funding for in-patient adolescent/child psychiatric beds.

We were forced to cut some funding for hospitals providers, but we were careful to protect critical access hospitals in rural areas and teaching hospitals.

We did equalize funding for worthy programs like CHIP of Virginia and the Healthy Families program from the private sector.

Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, we were able to add 178 new Medicaid Waiver slots for the biennium. That continues our House’s strong commitment to provide support for the most vulnerable citizens among us.

Mr. Speaker, we also have budget language that provides for restoration of cuts to the FAMIS program should we realize additional FMAP funding. I’m sure everyone knows what FMAP is. FMAP is the federal medical assistance percentage. That's the money that we get from Washington, the Federal government has passed 60 cents for every 50 cents.

But, I do want to say a word about that money. This is funding to the states that recognizes the extraordinary growth of Medicaid budgets from state to state. It’s provided to the states to help them deal with this growth.

Although there are no statutory obligations to spend every dollar of that on health care, there are statutory obligations to not reduce eligibility requirements and we will certainly honor that. What you may not know is that 44 states have used that enhanced FMAP funding to the bottom line to help them balance their budgets.

In that regard, let me just say one thing about the other body’s budget. I believe that they have transferred most of the necessary cuts into the second year of the biennium and they’ve used the FMAP money to try to backfill that. That’s not a responsible action to take if you place a high priority on developing a structurally balanced budget going forward. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, given this economy, that could be a recipe for disaster. It takes one-time funds, one-time money and uses it for operations and ongoing expenses, rather than for non-recurring expenses. The House plan does not do that.

You’ve all heard about the cliff. Well, the cliff in the other body’s budget is higher and steeper because of the way they treated that money.

If there are any lessons from the ARRA/federal stimulus money that we've already got, it’s that localities that used that money for one-time, non-recurring expenses have fared a lot better. And localities that didn't do that are the ones facing the big layoffs. That’s why you see some of the FMAP in our budget used for one-time expenses.

In summary, Mr. Speaker, I’m proud of the House health budget. I don’t like it, but I think we've done our job. I think the conferees will make it better and I look forward to getting the conference report back, and voting for it and getting out of here on time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Check out Cox's speech on YouTube.

Cox notes that the House budget decreases K-12 spending by around $100 million, not the $1.8 billion the VEA claims. The transcript of his speech follows:

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

You heard the gentleman from Fairfax talk about Pre-K and I'm sure you'll probably hear a series of speeches dealing with K-12 and I do want to respond to that because I do think it's very, very important.

As a matter of fact, if you’ll recall last Thursday, during the budget debate actually, we had some interesting rhetoric about how this side of the aisle, basically, in the house budget, was going to dramatically cut K-12.

As a matter of fact, numbers were thrown around like 30,000 teachers, etc. and I thought what I would do is respond to that a little bit.

And, if you go back to last Friday, right after that budget debate, I went to my office and I saw this flyer from the VEA. And it was interesting that the rhetoric seemed to sort of match the rhetoric on the floor. And here's what the flyer said. It said:

“Stand up for public education. The General Assembly is preparing to cut $1.8 billion from education funding. That means 34,000 education employees or 1 in 6 educators will lose their jobs. And it will destroy public education as we know it.”

So, of course, on Sunday, I looked in my Sunday paper. I had my cup of coffee and my fire. And it was sort of interesting to see how the reporters were reporting the rally. And, sure enough, it talked about hundreds of people coming to the Capitol to protest education cuts.

And one of the quotes I thought was very interesting because it was from Rob Jones, the head of the VEA, and he said, “I hope I have made clear why the House should take their budget and shove it in a trash can.” Certainly a very calm and rational remark. Only topped by this remark at the rally—another person noted that the legislature has voted to raise the speed limit to 70 mph on Interstates. He is then quoted as saying, “the cost of changing all the signs should go to the students that don't have anything to eat in the morning.” Now, what's curious about that statement is that we didn't cut, of course, the school lunch program or the breakfast program. The charge is just outright false. And I thought to myself, well, Should I really say something, because frankly those numbers are so exaggerated and frankly so silly, they border on being untruthful. But, I've learned a lesson down here—if you don't respond and it stays out there long enough, good people start to believe it. So, here's my rebuttal.

First, let's look at the charge that 34,000 education employees, or one in six educators, will lose their jobs due to the General Assembly. Now, I've told you all many times that I've been in this public school profession for 27 years. The gentleman from Caroline has spent his entire career in public education. Coach Tata, behind me—they call him coach for a reason—spent his entire career in public education. And you know really there was a secret plot for 27 years. We wanted to see how many teachers we could cut. Think about that a second. Here we are, we’ve dedicated our lives to it and we're going to allow one out of every six teachers to be cut. Why would anyone even contemplate people like us support that type of cuts and rhetoric? The reality is, in K-12, we have gone beyond the Kaine budget, but very prudently. As a matter of fact, it's not $1.8 billion; it's around $100 million.

And I also want to say something I think is extremely important. That is--K-12 does deserve the scrutiny that any other area of government does. As a matter of fact, I almost, during the budget debate when people talked about K-12, etc., wanted to ask: “tell me exactly what Project Discovery does?” And I guarantee, if you're honest, probably 90 percent of the people in this Chamber have no idea what Project Discovery does. It's something we funded every year to the tune of about $720,000, and, frankly it’s an enhanced guidance counselor program that I've never thought works. If you look at programs like Project Graduation, I mean, how many of you all can honestly sit down and tell me exactly what Project Graduation does? It was a Gov. Warner initiative that sort of petered out; we still fund it. How about this $15.7 million a year we reimburse school systems for travel? $15.7 million a year. Now, when I'm thinking of travel, I think of paying some teacher for gas to go to a conference. When, in reality, it turns out they bill us for the conference, hotels, airfare, everything they can think of. Do you think it’s responsible for us to be reimbursing $15.7 million for travel.

In Pre-K--I'll talk about Pre-K. We've expanded Pre-K from probably $35 million to $75 million and I would disagree with the gentleman; it's not a core function of education and, frankly, you better be careful because every dollar you put in Pre-K is a dollar you take out of the classroom. And I would say the studies are very, very mixed, especially when you get to that 8th grader, that 11th grader. Those results go down dramatically. As a matter of fact, a lot of the Pre-K studies basically find that if the child is truly free lunch and truly in poverty, it has some effect. Studies really don't support much beyond that. So, I would refute that Pre-K is the be all and end all.

Let me finish with this—we need to have a legitimate discussion about what the level of K-12 should be. That's legit. It's legit to have a position that we didn't fund it enough. We cannot have a rational discussion when you're throwing out silly figures like $1.8 billion; when you're throwing out figures like 34,000 people being laid off. We can't have a rational discussion.

We owe it to our constituents on this side of the aisle to be candid about what we did and why we did it. And I think everyone in this house has a responsibility to be candid on the other side of the aisle when an organization like the VEA comes out with those types of numbers to hold them accountable.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.