The disingenuous budget

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, published in Greenville Daily Reflector, August 3, 2014.

There are two pieces of good news about the final state budget agreement released this week. One is listed explicitly in the budget document. The other is how legislative leaders are presenting the plan.

Teachers in North Carolina are getting a raise. That is the explicit part. Despite the claims otherwise, it is not the biggest overall percentage increase in state history, though newer teachers are getting a double digit increase.

But many teachers will earn more money this year than they earned last year. And that’s good. Also welcome news is how legislative leaders are describing their budget and how the themes of the budget debate developed.

Last year funding for education at all levels was slashed and calls for teacher raises were ignored or worse. There was an open hostility in the air.

After a year of outrage, protests, and petitions, giving teachers a raise became the number one priority of House and Senate this year. There is an election in November after all.

Now they are citing the same rankings they once condemned to show how much their raise will mean, to show teachers how much they appreciate them. Please.

The same is true with Medicaid. After spending the last three years trashing the program that provides health care for the most vulnerable people in the state, House leaders offered a passionate defense of the program this session when confronted with a Senate proposal to kick thousands of aged, blind, and disabled people off the health care rolls.

Judging from the new rhetoric about teachers and Medicaid, you might think something has changed, that maybe the ideologues running state government have realized that the people of North Carolina do not support their slashing funding for education, human services, and other vital programs.

Nope. The news is not that good, not even close.

A look beyond the teacher raise numbers makes that clear.

The final budget actually makes more cuts to education to pay for the teacher raises and a $1,000 flat increase for most state employees. The university is hit the hardest, forced to absorb another $76 million “discretionary cut” on top of the deep cuts made in the last three years.

That’s especially noteworthy since of the one of the House budget chairs told reporters Wednesday that university funding was maintained. That’s an odd way to describe another massive cut.

The budget makes cuts in health and human services too, from Medicaid to child care subsidies to programs that help seniors who are confined at home.

Most importantly, there’s the failure to account for the increased cost of last year’s tax cuts, a $200 million hole in the calendar year. That makes it likely that Governor Pat McCrory will order more cuts at state agencies later in the year—after the election—to fill the budget hole that even some Republicans are privately predicting.

This is not a budget to move North Carolina forward. Not kicking vulnerable people off of Medicaid immediately is not a cause for celebration or pats on the back.

Neither is giving teachers a one-time pay hike while making cuts to public schools and slashing the university system to pay for it instead of canceling the next round of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that take effect January 1.

Legislative leaders may want us to think they are kinder and gentler this year and want to make important investments in public schools and human services and other state intuitions.

But the numbers in their disingenuous smoke and mirrors election year budget say otherwise.

http://www.reflector.com/opinion/fitzsimon/fitzsimon-disingenuous-budget-2575411