Consumer Choice: AFP believes in preserving and maintaining free markets to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.  Government is ever encroaching on consumers' rights and taking away their ability to make decisions.  A dangerous fad is sweeping across the country: banning smoking.  Businesses deserve to decide whether to allow smoking in their establishments or not and consumers deserve to decide what establishments they visit, without the heavy hand of government forcing the answer upon them.  Regulation of business markets is also eroding consumer's choices.  Virginia, like many other states, is attempting to further regulate payday lend businesses.  A consumer's right to enter into a legal contract to borrow money the way they choose needs to be protected.  AFP believes it is essential that consumer choices are preserved.  

Personal Property: Fundamental to achieving the American Dream is the right of individuals and businesses to own and utilize their own personal property, as well as keep more of their hard-earned money.  Unfortunately, in 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that premise in the case of Kelo v. City of New London, determining that the Constitution allows for governments to take personal property for higher revenue uses under the provision of Eminent Domain.

AFP believes that Virginia homeowners and business owners deserve protection against abuses of Eminent Domain and safeguards against outrageous private property seizures by state or local governments.  Economic development should not come at the expense of private property rights.  

Taxation: AFP also supports efforts to ensure that the Virginia Tax Code is fair and promotes a competitive business environment.  AFP believes in removing impediments to small business growth, cutting taxes, and reducing government spending in order to halt the encroachment of government into the economic lives of Virginians.  One area this can be accomplished is through the elimination of the Car Tax burden, as promised to Virginians in 1998.  With a proposed increase in the sales tax on the purchase of a car, Virginian drivers continue to bare more of the tax burden.  Other opportunities to alleviate the tax burden on Virginians include reductions and exemptions to sales and use tax collections, as well as changes to the individual income tax code.  

Transportation: Virginians are acutely aware of the Commonwealth’s growing transportation needs, and the challenges created both for individuals and businesses that rely on Virginia roadways. That is why a careful eye should watch the state government as it tries to balance all of its responsibilities and fund this growing demand. To this end, AFP encourages reforms that will speed progress on transportation projects throughout the Commonwealth and ensure that those projects are being completed in a fiscally responsible manner. Virginia’s taxpayers expect the Department of Transportation to be accountable for the tax dollars it’s spending, both in the length of time it takes to complete construction, as well as in keeping those projects within budget.

For that reason, AFP encourages strengthening the Public Private Transportation Act (PPTA) to advance innovative approaches proposed by the private sector to reduce the time and cost of new construction projects. Additionally, AFP also believes in “locking” the Transportation Trust Fund. Taxpayers have the right to expect that their tax dollars are being spent on the intended purposes instead of being raided in order to pay for other pet-projects.

Education: In fiscal year 2007, Virginia spent $13.6 billion, 7.59 billion from the General Fund, on education.  This is approximately 38% of the total budget.  Funding growth has far outpaced the increases in student enrollment in public schools, with per pupil inflation-adjusted spending increasing more than 70% since 1975.

One factor of concern is that in many Virginia localities, a large percentage of that funding never makes it into the classroom and therefore never benefits students.  Simply pouring more money into public education without a guarantee that those dollars are actually making any significant difference is not in the best interest of Virginia students or taxpayers.  This type of fiscal mismanagement has led to a national movement dubbed the “65 percent solution.”  By transferring funds from administration and support to actual teaching and classroom funding, Virginia could reduce class size, pay higher teacher salaries and improve education, all without raising taxes.  Reattribution of just 3.5% of educational operating expenditures could generate almost $300 million for Virginia’s classrooms.  That is why AFP supports fiscally responsible measures to ensure taxpayer dollars are being invested wisely in educational programs. Additionally, the current system of public education in the Commonwealth allows parents very few options when it comes to the educational needs of their children.  So as taxpayers continue to pay an ever-growing bill for public schools, those public schools face little accountability to parents who have no real choices should the schools not meet students’ needs.School choice is about empowering parents, not bureaucracies, to determine and make the educational decisions about how best to educate their children in a manner that meets individual and unique educational needs. School choice can also save taxpayer dollars.  Families who choose to send their children to non-public schools save the state money (the current savings to the state from students not enrolled in public schools totals more than $1 billion annually).  In addition, when students opt out of enrollment in public schools, this reduces class size and the need for new school construction—an increasingly expensive burden on local governments and therefore local taxpayers.AFP believes that Virginia taxpayers deserve school choice to allow for parental freedom in educating their children. Also, by removing money from the painfully inefficient public education bureaucracy, school choice will help curb the rapid rate of growth in spending caused by the current state controlled monopoly on education.

Medicaid: In 1967, Medicaid was formed as the federal-state healthcare program for the indigent; since that time the program has seen little in the way of substantive change.  Now, Medicaid is one of the fastest growing areas of the Virginia state budget.  Virginia Medicaid was a $1 billion program in 1990, a $2.5 billion program in 2000, and it had increased to a $5 billion program in 2005.  At current rates of growth, In July of 2006, Governor Kaine predicted that the Medicaid program would double in cost over the next eight years. This growth rate, coupled with the rising number of eligible recipients (almost 900,000 Virginians in 2006), is placing increasing strain on the state budget.  That is why the archaic Medicaid system is in dire need of modernization.

AFP believes reforms are necessary in order to maintain this program for the neediest Virginians; ensure that the participants have a choice in the best care for the dollars allotted; and guarantee that the program effectively utilizes the resources provided by the Virginia taxpayers.  As with Welfare Reform in the 1990s, opportunities are available to restructure the program.  Options to be explored include: empowering recipients with more direct knowledge and individual control, incentives for private long-term care insurance, improving Medicaid’s efficiency and operations, establishing an Inspector General to oversee the investigation of Medicaid program fraud and abuse, providing incentives for individual savings through Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) and controlling budget growth of the system in relation to inflation and utilization.