FACT CHECK: 5 Teacher Pay Raises in 5 years? Not so fast…

RALEIGH – Of course the numbers are being called into question, and publications are issuing corrections. The much repeated ‘Five teacher pay raises in five years’ (including the forthcoming 6.3 percent raise) is not entirely correct, after all. Actually, it’s eight raises to take home pay Republicans have passed since 2013.

Three tax reductions make up the difference. From Forbes:

“It is true that the new budget announced by Republican leadership in the General Assembly would raise teacher pay by 6.2%, a much larger boost than the 3.85% increase that the entire general fund is getting. Enactment of this teacher pay raise, even if it has to occur over the veto of Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C) like it has in the past, will indeed represent the fifth pay increase for teachers approved by the GOP-led General Assembly over the past half decade.

However, that’s not the complete story. That’s because North Carolina legislators have also increased teacher pay on three additional instances with the rate-reducing tax reform passed in 2013 and complemented with further income tax relief passed in 2015 and just last year in the summer of 2017.

So no, the pay increase soon to be approved by North Carolina legislators this year won’t be their fifth pay increase. When taking into account all the actions by Republican lawmakers in the North Carolina General Assembly, including the repeated rounds of income tax relief that have allowed teachers to bring home more of their hard-earned income, teachers across the Old North State are actually poised to receive their eighth take home pay increase from Republican lawmakers in just the last five years.

‘B-B-But those tax cuts were just for the rich!’ stammer the Leftists.

Those darned rich people have seen a near doubling of their standard deductions. The greedy bourgeoisie have used the GOP handout tax cuts to kick thousands of low income North Carolinians off the tax rolls altogether!

Read more of the pithy fact check and analysis of tax reforms, as well as the real costs of Gov. Cooper’s Big Government agenda, here.

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