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By JOHN GOOLRICK
As necessary as it may be, there may be a political downside to the downsizing of government Republicans are advocating at the federal and state levels.
When there is talk in Congress of eliminating entire federal departments and drastically reducing the scope of others, the intended cuts would affect thousands upon thousands of civil service workers who live in the state, many of them in voter rich Northern Virginia.
It can also affect many others who are not direct federal employees but who depend on federal contracts for their livelihoods. Around most of the many military installations in Virginia you will find dozens of defense contractors whose payrolls depend on business from those installations.
And though Virginia has apparently escaped serious harm in the latest round of base closings, it is almost inevitable that at some point the state will lose bases that produce huge economic benefits to the areas in which they are located. This is particularly true if the GOP budget ax really makes across the board cuts designed to balance the budget early in the next century.
At the state level, this year’s legislative races really amount to a referendum on whether the people really want scaled down government as proposed by Governor George Allen, or whether when push comes to shove the voters didn’t understand the kind of limited government message he was promoting in the gubernatorial campaign of 1993.
Some evidence that they didn’t came during the 1995 legislative ses
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