Bob McDonnell Plagiarizes Creigh Deeds' Economic Plan?

Check this out: A friend of mine was rereading Bob McDonnell's press release for his "economic plan" (using the term loosely). In case you need a refresher on the key parts of McDonnell's proposal, it literally called for delegating job creation to someone else, to assign a subcabinet official to focus on "rural economic development," and to double an economic development fund that Bob McDonnell himself voted to cut three times when he was in the legislature. Great stuff, huh?

The other part of McDonnell's plan was this:

Job Creation Tax Credit
[...]

· Bob McDonnell recognizes that not all businesses can expand by 100 employees during these tough economic times. To expand the use of this successful program and incentivize job creation, Bob McDonnell will remove the 100 job threshold and give any company that creates at least 50 jobs the $1,000 tax credit.

· For facilities that locate in an enterprise zone or economically distressed area, we will lower the threshold from 50 to 25 jobs.

This sounded a little bit familiar, so my friend went back and checked Creigh Deeds' legislative record. It turns out that Deeds actually sponsored a bill in 1995 that is essentially identical to McDonnell's proposal:

HB 2517 (1995), R. Creigh Deeds, Chief Patron - Virginia business facility tax credit. Allows enterprises engaged in any type of business to qualify for major business facility job tax credits. The job tax credit program provides firms that create new full-time jobs with a tax credit of $1,000 for each new full-time job in excess of 50. The credit is also available for creation of 25 jobs or more in economically distressed areas.

Sound famliar? Yeah, sure does. I'll tell ya, for someone who supposedly has lots and lots of "bold ideas" to create economic opportunity in Virginia, it seems like Bob McDonnell is falling just a weeeee bit short on substance and originality here. I mean, does anyone really think that putting other people in charge of Virginia's economy and plagiarizing (or at least cribbing from) your opponent's legislative record is particularly impressive in terms of "leadership?"

On second thought, when you consider how thin McDonnell's record is and how little McDonnell's people have to work with, maybe it's not so surprising after all. I mean, perhaps if McDonnell had actually been sponsoring bills to create jobs when he was in the legislature, instead of pushing 35 bills to restrict a woman's right to choose, he might have something constructive to say on this subject. But he didn't, and he doesn't. Case closed.