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Governor Glenn Youngkin’s final State of the Commonwealth address last night offered more than a farewell, it served as an empirical rebuttal to the claim that conservative, pro-growth governance, like those supported by the Thomas Jefferson Institute, cannot deliver tangible results.
By every meaningful metric — jobs, investment, education outcomes, revenue growth, and regulatory efficiency – we agree with Governor Youngkin that Virginia today stands much stronger than it did four years ago.
Business Development and Job Creation
Youngkin’s speech underscored what is probably his administration’s defining achievement: restoring Virginia’s reputation as a place where businesses can invest, expand, and hire. Since declaring Virginia “Open for Business” on Day One, the Commonwealth has:
- Secured more than $157 billion in business investment (more than the previous six administrations combined);
- Increased employment by nearly 270,000;
- Created 255,000 new job openings, with 80,000 new jobs expected from existing commitments, including 40,000 construction jobs.
These are real, high paying positions in manufacturing, life sciences, and advanced technology — all across the Commonwealth.
Governor Youngkin warned the incoming administration and the new General Assembly that this growth requires policy certainty, right-to-work protections, lower taxes and a government that competes rather than obstructs. His passionate warning against altering Virginia’s right-to-work law was not ideological, it was empirical, rooted in observed capital flight from high-tax, high-regulation states.
Cutting Red Tape: Smaller Government, Bigger Results
Perhaps the most overlooked success story of the outgoing administration is their success at regulatory reform. The administration:
- Streamlined regulations by 35 percent;
- Delivered $1.4 billion in annual savings to Virginians; and
- Reduced the cost of building a home by an average of $24,000.
This is conservative governance at its best: removing bureaucratic friction so families can afford homes, entrepreneurs can start businesses, and employers can hire faster, without sacrificing public safety or accountability.
Revenue Growth and Tax Relief: Growth Pays the Bills
Youngkin directly confronted a persistent myth that tax cuts starve government. Instead, Virginia experienced:
- Four straight years of 8 percent compounded revenue growth (60 percent faster than the previous decade);
- Generated a $10 billion surplus;
- Provided $9 billion in tax relief while still increasing investments in education, healthcare, infrastructure, and public safety; and
- December revenue growth of 20 percent year-over-year, with a year-to-date growth of $1.2 billion after just six months.
This was done with no COVID money or one-time gimmicks, just sustained economic expansion driven by jobs and consumer confidence.
The conservative takeaway is unmistakable: lowering tax burdens attracts people and capital; raising them drives both away — a lesson reinforced by Virginia’s first net domestic in-migration in over a decade.
Younkin warned that plans to reinstate the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative carbon tax, pass a wealth tax, or create a new family leave tax on employment will reverse the historic gains made over the last four years.
Education Reform: Parents Matter, Standards Matter
Youngkin devoted substantial attention to restoring educational excellence after pandemic-era failures left Virginia students with some of the nation’s worst learning losses. His administration refocused education around parental involvement, transparency, higher standards, and workforce-aligned learning. Results followed:
- Teacher pay up nearly 20 percent;
- Teacher vacancies down 36 percent;
- A 20 percent surge in math proficiency after raising standards;
- Four out of five graduates now leave high school with a credential or certification.
Lab schools, career and technical education, and literacy reform replaced bureaucratic box-checking with outcomes — another example of conservative reform delivering measurable improvement.
Energy Policies that Fuel Growth
Governor Youngkin rightly highlighted the enormous economic success of Virginia’s data center industry and warned against policies that would undermine it. Data centers have become a cornerstone of the Commonwealth’s growth, generating billions in private investment, supporting thousands of high-paying jobs, strengthening national security, and providing critical revenue for local governments — particularly in Northern Virginia.
Yet this growth has exposed a fundamental policy failure: Virginia’s energy framework was designed for a stagnant state, not a rapidly growing one. Youngkin made clear that meeting rising demand requires an all-of-the-above energy strategy, including significant new natural gas and nuclear generation, and that renewables alone cannot deliver reliable, affordable power at the scale Virginia now needs.
The Governor was unequivocal that the Virginia Clean Economy Act does not work for Virginians — driving up costs, risking brownouts, and threatening to push data centers and investment to competing states. Ending the VCEA and accelerating energy generation is not anti-environmental; it is pro-growth, pro-reliability, and essential to keeping Virginia competitive, affordable, and economically secure in the decades ahead.
The Conservative Lesson Going Forward
Governor Youngkin’s address was, at its core, a defense of commonsense conservatism: limited but effective government, respect for families, a competitive tax climate, regulatory restraint, and accountability in education. Virginia’s experience over the past four years demonstrates that conservative policies do not merely preserve prosperity, they generate it.
As leadership transitions, the challenge before the Commonwealth is clear: build on what works, resist the temptation to reverse proven reforms, and keep Virginia competing and winning.
Virginia did not soar by accident. It soared by design.
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