HSLP 2011: Day 11-Tuesday, July 19

High School Leaders Program
Day 11 - Tuesday, July 19
Reported by: Patrick Bond, Monticello High School

Today was an application of many of the theories that we have been learning for the past two weeks. We now know what the General Assembly has to do every two years to balance the budget, and it isn’t easy. Fierce debates raged in the lecture halls of U.Va. over whether spending cuts or tax increases were the best option to close Virginia’s hypothetical $1 billion deficit. Today we played The Budget Game.

9-9:30 a.m.: The students arrive at Robertson Hall ready to face the problems that will test us throughout this full-day exercise. We are ready to face the same scenarios that many of the legislators in Richmond have faced. Professor Bragaw splits our class of 27 into two houses, the House of Delegates and the Senate.

9:30 a.m. - noon: The House and Senate split and go into different lecture rooms. We are issued our packets of options for the proposed state budget and get the challenging task underway. In the House of Delegates, we began at page one and worked our way through the tedious proposal, making significant cuts across the board and raising the state sales tax by half a percent. After heated debates (but thankfully no personal attacks), the House reached a consensus and was allowed to go eat lunch (a contributing factor to the consensus). The Senate had reached their budget proposal a lot faster than the House, probably because there were 19 delegates and only eight senators. Now it was time to split into two committees with four senators and 15 delegates to try to reach a consensus between both houses.

1-3 p.m.: In Committee One, there was overwhelming cooperation between the two houses. Unfortunately, the same thing did not happen in Committee Two, where there was deadlock and unwavering ideas, especially on the issues of Medicaid and state parks. Finally after long hours of negotiations, both committees returned to battle it out over the two proposed budgets. Thankfully, there was no battle between the two committees, but high amounts of support instead. We had passed a state budget, with a surplus of $1 million.

The big lessons of the day were the importance of cooperation and compromise. As the Rolling Stones once wrote, “You can’t always get what you want, but...you’ll get what you need.” Today’s lesson was definitely an important one; you can’t get things done, especially in politics, if you are not willing to compromise.