We all know Bob McDonnell is committed to conservative values. We’ve witnessed him devalue LGBT people in the workplace, try to sweep the nastiness of slavery under the rug while celebrating Virginia’s confederate heritage, and stand back while our loon of an Attorney General sues the Federal Government for passing Health Care Reform and trying to move the nation forward on environmental protection and alternative, green, energy. Let’s also not forget that McDonnell’s transportation plan is so conservative, it can’t be found.

Funny enough, I stumbled onto what I thought was a clash with conservatism. Bob McDonnell is playing a little shell game with money essentially borrowed from the Virginia Retirement System, calling it a surplus in order to make him and his administration look good. If that wasn’t bad enough, McDonnell is dangling this surplus in front of state employees, telling them the commonwealth is well on its way to hitting a benchmark in surplus funds needed to issue bonuses to them. Nice.

Last time I checked, one of the pillars of conservatism was fiscal conservatism. Usually this assumes a certain level of fiscal responsibility, where budgets are balanced, tax dollars used appropriately, and spending is kept in check with either increases in taxes or decreases in other spending. With this whole notion of a surplus of borrowed money and the promise of bonuses to commonwealth employees, McDonnell seems to have abandoned fiscal conservatism with this little shell game. Seems like this is a way to work around a budget, an inappropriate use of tax dollars, and a disregard for spending to me.

Related posts:

1. Elections Matter: McDonnell Leading Conservative Swing
2. McDonnell Issues Non-Discrimination Directive
3. Bob McDonnell forgets about transportation
4. McDonnell gets his way with NRA in elementary schools due to typo
5. McDonnell’s Budget Raises Taxes for Working Families