"When it comes to the budget and taxes, it can be somewhat hard to tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats in the Virginia statehouse.

With money tight, both parties are trying to get their piece of the state's $77 billion, two-year budget.

In some states, as well as in Washington, the partisan fault lines are pretty clear during budget battles. Democrats fight to preserve funding for schools and social programs, even if it means higher taxes. Republicans resist efforts to raise taxes, instead focusing on scaling back the size of government by controlling spending.

But after big losses in last year's legislative elections, Virginia Republicans sound more like Democrats on some issues. Conversely, Democrats are acting like Republicans on other issues.

To help pay for some initiatives, such as an expansion of pre-kindergarten, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and fellow Democrats in the Senate have embraced controlling the rate of growth in other programs, including Medicaid.

All 19 Senate Republicans objected to the move, arguing that a program that benefits the state's neediest residents should not be forced to take a budget hit because of an economic slowdown. The 21 Senate Democrats were forced to block the effort to restore the money.

In the House, the Republican majority has been trying its hardest to portray a sense of favoring government spending for public needs.

Kaine wants to close the budget shortfall by transferring money from the state's reserve fund and cutting money for school construction by more than $100 million. He also would cut aid to local governments by 5.4 percent and reduce grants to public colleges and universities by 2 percent.

But House Republicans have been arguing that the budget they approved last week restores many of Kaine's cuts. The House GOP also says that its budget includes $193 million more for education than Kaine has proposed.

House Republicans are also trying to curry favor with the labor unions, which have traditionally supported Democrats, by calling for pay increases this year. Senate Democrats and Kaine support a pay increase next year.

Even the biggest budget fights this year are being waged on the margins.

Senate Democrats are proposing a $38 million expansion in subsidized pre-kindergarten education, compared with the additional $21 million sought by the House.

House Republicans have tried to outflank Democrats on the issue of mental health. The House budget includes an additional $85 million for mental health, compared with the $42 million sought by Kaine and Senate Democrats.

The biggest budget debate is over using the state's reserves, also known as the rainy-day fund, to help close a shortfall.

Kaine and Senate Democrats want to transfer about $423 million from the rainy-day fund. House and Senate Republicans say Democrats are being fiscally irresponsible by asking for such a large transfer from the $1.2 billion reserve fund. GOP legislators are calling for a transfer of $220 million.

Shouldn't Virginia Republicans want to use the reserve fund, which is designed for an economic slowdown so that there won't be calls to raise taxes?

But taxes are no longer a Republican vs. Democratic issue.

The 19 Republicans in the Senate successfully scuttled a bill this week that would have given homeowners as much as a 20 percent break on their real estate assessments.

The decision gave Kaine, who made the bill one of his priorities, an opportunity to position Democrats as the party more interested in giving tax relief to families.

"I don't know why, but Senate Republicans decided they are not going to give a tax break to middle-class taxpayers," Kaine said this week.

But Republicans are not the only ones defying stereotypes when it comes to taxes.

To address a shortfall in the part of the budget used to maintain highways, Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) proposed a nickel-a-gallon increase in the gasoline tax over the next five years.

The bill easily passed the Senate, but it died this week in the House Finance Committee.

The two leading Democrats in the House, Minority Leader Ward L. Armstrong (Henry) and Brian J. Moran (Alexandria), joined the Republicans on the committee to vote against Saslaw's bill.

Moran, a likely candidate for governor next year, argued there was no need to take a tough political vote on a bill destined to fail in the Republican-controlled House.

But the votes by Moran and Armstrong could make it harder for Democrats to portray Republicans as failing to adequately fund the state's transportation needs.

To be sure, there remain stark philosophical differences between Virginia Democrats and Republicans, especially on some social and environmental issues.

The latest budget fight, however, is yet another sign that Virginia has become a purple state.

Democrats and Republicans are trying to position themselves in the center, a tactic that will result in lots of campaign literature next year from both parties promoting efforts to spend more on various programs." (Tim Craig, Virginia Notebook, The Washington Post, February 28, 2008)