As late as last week, Republican Gov. Youngkin and Democrats in the General Assembly looked as though they were edging closer and closer to mutually assured destruction, at loggerheads over the state budget, with an ever-increasing possibility looming of a state government shutdown at the end of June.
Thankfully, this showdown/shutdown seems to have been put on hold, and the warring parties appear to have stepped back from the brink. Last Wednesday, Youngkin and General Assembly leaders announced this new state of détente. While specifics have yet to be divulged, the two sides have, as the Washington Post put it, “basically [reached] an agreement to reach an agreement.”
In the wake of this agreement, the House of Delegates voted unanimously to set aside all of Youngkin’s 233 proposed amendments to the biennial budget and then procedurally kill the underlying document—the General Assembly’s own 2024-2026 budget, something that had bipartisan support.
This resets the whole process, leavi...