BY WESLEY P. HESTER

This week’s sparring match between U.S. Senate candidates George Allen and Timothy M. Kaine centered on disaster aid and tax hikes.   

On Wednesday, the day after Congress reached a bipartisan stopgap spending deal to avert a government shutdown and replenish the depleted disaster aid fund, Kaine and Democrats hit Allen for joining House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in saying that spending cuts should accompany disaster relief.

“George Allen attempted to turn a natural disaster into an economic disaster by joining Tea Partiers in Congress who held disaster funding hostage in order to further their ideological agenda and risked shutting down the federal government,” said Kaine spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine. 

“As a Senator, George Allen repeatedly voted against legislation requiring Congress to offset its spending and voted to add $3 trillion in debt. By siding with the Tea Party in calling for disaster funding to be offset – a position he’s never held before and one his own Republican Governor disagrees with – Allen put election politics ahead of Virginia families in recovering communities.”

Meanwhile, Allen’s camp was busy pummeling Kaine for supporting tax increases proposed as part of President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction plan, which is tied to his jobs plan.

Kaine has said that he supports allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest Americans, commenting during a recent Channel 12 interview that “even [Americans for Tax Reform President] Grover Norquist has said, that’s not a tax hike.” .

“Chairman Kaine is scrambling to defend his support for job-crushing tax hikes to pay for another nearly $450 billion stimulus and the continuation of the same failed policies that he championed as President Obama’s hand-picked Chairman of the Democratic National Committee,” said Allen campaign spokesman Bill Riggs.  

“After telling Americans for nearly three years that the first $800 billion failed stimulus was working and the economy was on the right track, despite more than 30 consecutive months of unemployment over 8 percent – Chairman Kaine’s rhetoric is changing, but his support for job-crushing tax hikes is the same.”