House budget another side of a bad coin

by Chris Fitzsimon

The budget and tax dance is back on center stage at the General Assembly with the House pushing to approve its spending plan this week. Legislative leaders from both chambers will then return to the backrooms to work out the differences between the House and Senate proposals.

Most of the discussion about the House plan that was released Sunday night has focused on how it differs from what the Senate passed a few weeks ago and there are major policy disagreements in the two bills. But it is also worth remembering what the two plans have in common.

They both slash funding for education at all levels to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The House makes deeper cuts to the university system than the Senate, slightly less to public schools, but both budgets fall well short of investing enough to keep education services at current levels.

The House plan spends more than 8 percent less than the level of investments made before the Great Recession began.

Both budgets also include massive policy changes, most notably the House proposal to create a voucher scheme to divert funding from public schools to unaccountable private and religious academies. A House committee passed a voucher bill but it was never debated on the House floor and the Senate hasn’t considered it at all.

By putting it in the budget, House leaders have guaranteed that the decision to set up a questionable voucher scheme will be made in secret by a handful of legislative leaders, not in a full and open public debate.

Both plans reflect the influence of the right-wing think tanks in Raleigh and the state budget director who funds them, from the calls to defund community economic development efforts to limiting doctor visits for people on Medicaid to the abolition of the successful public financing system for judicial elections.

There are a few differences here too. The House thankfully rejects the Senate’s proposal to kick pregnant women off Medicaid and the absurd plan to transfer the State Bureau of Investigation out of the Attorney General’s office.

But the House gives almost a million dollars over two years to a far-right school privatization group, and eliminates the widely respected Child Fatality Task Force. The House budget also follows the Senate’s lead in funneling money to an anti-choice pregnancy “counseling” center.

House leaders do deserve credit for including money to compensate the living victims of the horrific eugenics programs and for resisting Senate efforts to defund a center for professional teacher development.

But overall, the House spending plan for the next two years has more in common with the Senate’s proposal than it has differences.

And then there is the debate over the great tax shift. House and Senate leaders have different ideas for changing the state tax code, but there’s plenty of philosophical agreement here too.

Both proposals are based on the notion that the wealthy should receive a tax break and the middle class and lower-income families should pay for it with more sales taxes, higher fees, and fewer services.

Both the House and Senate tax shifts are Robin Hood in reverse. It’s only a matter of timing and degree that separates them. And both the House and Senate budgets set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for their tax plans.

That’s a big reason neither plan comes close to addressing the state’s vital needs. They are instead documents to continue the majority party’s crusade to remake North Carolina into the tea party state their far-right base demands—damaging our schools and ripping new holes in the safety net in the process.

North Carolina families deserve far better.

Chris Fitzsimon is Director of NC Policy Watch and an NC Spin Panelist