Ken Cuccinelli’s solution to improve VA’s mental health is a little south of sanity

For now, the mentally “ill” are safe from Ken Cuccinelli’s political assaults as some kind of economic drag on Virginia’s economy, but his solutions for improving Virginia’s mental health system seem as far from practicality as his candidacy has been from mainstream politics.

During a public debate between candidates for Virginia governor, Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli, at Collegiate School in suburban Richmond, Ken Cuccinelli ideated that preschool vouchers for low-income children and tax cuts would improve mental health in Virginia. If you’re wondering how these actions would improve mental health in Virginia, you’re in good company. It is unclear how reducing Virginia’s budget AND paying for preschool vouchers would directly (or indirectly) help Virginia’s mental health system.

As if to allay any attempts by Terry McAuliffe to brand Cuccinelli as unsympathetic to the plight of the mentally ill and unrealistic in his policy prescriptions, Virginia’s attorney general spoke about how he worked with the mentally ill as a student, volunteered at homeless shelters as a private lawyer. I’m still unsure whether or not Cuccinelli was drawing a direct correlation between the mentally ill and homelessness.

Cuccinelli also claimed he would find more revenue for mental health programs while “pledging” to reduce state taxes by $1.4 billion a year. In other words, Cuccinelli wants to undertake a financial miracle by spending money that will no longer be flowing into Virginia’s budgetary coffers.

Whatever policy direction Cuccinelli claims he’ll go down to help fund mental health in Virginia, the attorney general has shown his true colors as a tried and true picker of winners and losers, the antithesis of the libertarian gospel that he occasionally attempts to infuse into his political rhetoric.

It’s curious, too, that Cuccinelli has chosen not to assault this segment of society as economic laggards or God’s curse upon Virginia, remarks which I wouldn’t be shocked to hear Cuccinelli utter. Maybe he is waiting for his running-mate, E.W. Jackson, to dub the mentally ill as God’s lepers.

At no point in the debate on Monday did Cuccinelli appear sincere in his willingness to help the mentally ill in Virginia or truly concerned about them as individuals. As governor, I wouldn’t expect Cuccinelli to do much more than what he did on Monday, pay lip-service to ideas that will never be put into action.