Republicans from President Donald Trump on down have beaten the drum against Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) for raising taxes, claiming that she has hiked them on everything from mattresses to food. There’s just one problem: It’s not true.
“I can’t believe what this new Governor, Spanberger, has done to the Commonwealth — So sad! She is adding so many Taxes, a Food and Beverage Tax, Digital Services Tax, Utilities Tax, and more,” Trump posted on his Truth Social account over the weekend.
But those proposals and others floated by Democrats this year died behind the scenes without ever coming to a general vote — let alone reaching Spanberger’s desk. One exception: a paid family and medical leave program that stands to add a new payroll tax, like other entitlement programs.
“Legislators can introduce anything they want,” Spanberger said Tuesday in an interview, describing efforts to blame her for bills that never passed as “a desperate tactic to try to accuse me of things I haven’t done.”
Spanberger has been a prominent target of Republicans since her message of affordability helped power a 15-point election win last year, with Democrats also picking up a wide majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. The victories cemented affordability as a theme for national Democrats heading into this year’s congressional midterms and elevated Spanberger’s profile as a successful centrist. Party leaders chose her to deliver the response to Trump’s State of the Union speech.
Spanberger said the attacks on her over taxes suggest that Trump must be worried about her success at the polls as “not a good indicator for him” heading into the midterms.
State and national GOP figures warned before and throughout this year’s General Assembly session that Spanberger was going to raise a smorgasbord of taxes that would reveal her to be a big-government liberal. When most of that fizzled, they continued sounding the alarm.
“FACT: Democrats proposed 50+ new taxes, breaking all of their “affordability” promises,” the Republican Party of Virginia posted Tuesday on Facebook.
Shortly before a Monday night deadline for Spanberger to act on the more than 1,000 pieces of legislation passed by the General Assembly this year, her office issued an unusual news release with the subject line “Gov. Spanberger Does Not Sign Tax Bills the General Assembly Never Passed.”
“The volume of misinformation — spread across social media and repeated in press coverage — made a clarification necessary,” the release said.
Spanberger said that the experience was “a little bit of a lesson learned for me,” adding that she should have more directly addressed the tax criticism before it became a recurring issue.
“It was sort of inconceivable to me that people would give any credence to my responsibility for bills that were not even moving through committee, let alone getting a vote, let alone getting to my desk,” Spanberger said.
She acknowledged that a new paid family medical leave program she supports would create payroll taxes on employees and large employers. But she compared the funding mechanism with unemployment insurance and said she believes its benefits have popular support.
A recent Post-Schar School poll found Virginia voters split on the policy, with 39 percent saying it would make life more affordable and 41 percent saying less affordable. Sixteen percent said it wouldn’t make a difference, and 5 percent had no opinion.
The taxes conservatives often highlight online include proposed levies on a wide variety of services — including dog grooming, cosmetic services and digital subscriptions — that died in committees in the House and Senate. Those were not uniquely Democratic ideas. In 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) proposed cutting income taxes and raising taxes on services, saying he wanted to shift the state’s revenue stream from what people earn to what they spend.
Other measures to increase taxes on investment income, firearm purchases and online delivery or transportation services also never made it out of committees this year.
A bill to impose a fee on mattress purchases to cover the cost of recycling them did pass the legislature, even getting a handful of Republican votes, but Spanberger vetoed it.
State Republicans say the fact that so many tax-hike bills were even introduced in the General Assembly showed the true priorities of Democrats. Tax increases “were topics right up until the end,” Senate minority leader Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) said.
When pressed on false claims about Spanberger’s actions, some Republicans, including the White House, argue Democrats have effectively raised state taxes by failing to conform Virginia tax policy to the federal cuts passed by Congress, including eliminating taxes on tips and overtime.
“President Trump is right: Abigail Spanberger has barely been in office for three months and she has already either signed or supported hundreds of millions of dollars in tax hikes on hardworking Virginia families,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email Tuesday.
Republicans also contend that some actions taken by Spanberger amount to tax increases, including signing a measure to reenroll Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon trading market to reduce emissions. Utilities say the move would increase customers’ bills, but Democrats say the funds raised come back to Virginia for energy efficiency programs that save money for residents in the long run.
Spanberger has taken a business-friendly stance on another major tax proposal by resisting efforts to end the state sales tax exemption for data centers. The proposal from Senate Democrats would raise billions for state government and could be popular with voters frustrated by data centers and their enormous electricity needs.
But Spanberger argues it could hurt the industry and has urged lawmakers to find an alternative. The stalemate has delayed completion of the state’s next two-year budget, with a deadline for approval looming at the end of June.
The governor took the opposite approach on another tax exemption: She signed a bill eliminating state real estate tax breaks for Confederate organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans. First proposed by a Virginia Beach high school student, similar legislation had passed before but was vetoed by Youngkin.
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