Washington inaction has Virginia business owners and legislators worried, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Tuesday, a day after a congressional "supercommittee"gave up on the task of cutting $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit.

"We have an unsustainable and immoral level of spending and debt and we are mortgaging the future generations of this country by failing to realize we have to balance our budget and make ends meet," McDonnell said. "We do it in Virginia and 48 other states do it as well. ... The day of reckoning is here. The bill is due."

McDonnell was speaking in Richmond after meeting with the Governor's Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates, an executive advisory council of legislators and business leaders that tries to predict revenue estimates for the commonwealth.

It was a closed-door gathering, exempt from public-meetings rules because businesses share their own revenue forecasts, hiring plans and other confidential information to help the state estimate future revenue, McDonnell said.

Filed Under : Federal Government Impact