Friday's follies

Published March 28, 2015

By Chris Fitzsimon

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, March 27, 2015.

Rucho’s ridiculous Robin Hood in reverse redux

Just when you think the leaders of the state Senate couldn’t be any more extreme or irresponsible, they come through with another absurd proposal.

Senator Bob Rucho and two of his colleagues want to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy by another billion dollars.

That’s right, billion with a B. Rucho’s proposal comes as leaders of the House and Senate openly acknowledge there’s not enough revenue to even give all teachers and state employees a raise next year and keep state services at current levels.

That’s because of the rising costs of the tax cuts of 2013, which Governor Pat McCrory promised would be revenue neutral.

Those tax reductions, which also provided a windfall to corporations and millionaires, are costing more than $700 million in the current fiscal year and the tab could easily rise to a billion dollars a year eventually.

And now Rucho wants to reduce state revenues by another billion. Even some folks on the Right, including the former head of Raleigh’s best-known conservative think tank, think that is a bad idea.

The outlandish proposal for more corporate tax cuts comes the same week that Senator Tom Apodaca told leaders of the university system that lawmakers would “do what they can” to increase funding for the UNC system next year and maybe even restore some of the deep budget cuts made since 2011.

Cutting taxes by another billion dollars won’t allow them to do very much. In fact, it would force even more cuts to education at all levels.

Governor Pat McCrory’s budget is proof of that. McCrory’s spending plan funds only enrollment increases and inflationary adjustments and would force the UNC system to cut its budget by another $50 million over the next two years to help pay for it.

And McCrory does not cut taxes at all, much less reduce them by a billion dollars. Rucho’s proposal would be a disaster and he is either oblivious to the damage it would do or simply doesn’t care.

A WRAL-TV story reports that Rucho was asked how he planned to pay for the additional billion dollar tax cut and he said “that’s not the issue.”

It is the overriding issue and the only answer is that he would pay for it by firing more teachers, forcing more devastating cuts to education and ripping more holes in the already tattered safety net.

But he just can’t seem to help himself.

McCrory’s confusing messages about UNC

Speaking of the university system, Governor Pat McCrory can’t seem to figure out what he thinks. McCrory has been critical of liberal arts education, criticized the UNC system for not preparing workers for the jobs available in the current marketplace, and warned about the “indoctrination” of students—whatever that means.

Then there is his budget, which calls for another round of funding reductions to the system after deep cuts in recent years. It sounds like McCrory thinks UNC has serious problems.

Earlier this week, McCrory (or someone on his behalf) tweeted “Top-notch basketball. World-class research universities.

Life-changing impact. That’s really sweet.” The “sweet” referring to a picture included in the tweet showing three cupcakes with the logos of UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State and Duke in the icing.

On Twitter to basketball fans, McCrory apparently believes the universities are world class and change lives. In his speeches and in his budgets, they are not doing their jobs, becoming indoctrination centers, and need their funding reduced.

More overreach by Senate leaders

And finally, the General Assembly just can’t seem to stop themselves from trying to run everything in the state, from county commissions to school boards to city councils.

Three Senators filed a bill this week to open up the sale of the Dorothea Dix property in Raleigh to private bidders in an auction.

That comes despite a deal signed in January between Raleigh officials and the McCrory Administration that sells the land to the city for $52 million. McCrory heralded the deal at a big news conference at the Governor’s Mansion.

The deal came after long and tedious negotiations after a previous contract for the sale engineered by former Governor Beverly Perdue was criticized by Republican legislative leaders. Now some of them are unhappy with the deal that McCrory has agreed to. And it’s clear they believe that they are running things in Raleigh and everywhere else in North Carolina they care to intervene.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/03/27/the-follies-226/

March 28, 2015 at 9:12 am
bruce stanley says:

March 30, 2015 at 8:31 am
Frank Burns says:

They will never be happy until full socialism is attained.