NC House Speaker Tim Moore Picks Apart Cooper/Democrats Criticisms of Republican Reforms

MOORE COUNTY – North Carolina House Speaker joined the Moore County Republican Men’s Club last week, touting Republican led reforms in taxes, regulations, and budget management. As lawmakers look beyond the Christmas holidays to the start of the 2018 legislative session, and 2018 elections, Moore rebuffed the tired criticisms of said reforms that come from Democrats like Gov. Roy Cooper and others on the left.

““In 2011, when Republicans took over majority, the unemployment rate was over 10 percent. We cut the personal income tax, business tax and fees. We’ve made all these changes to the tax code. We have the lowest taxes we’ve had in North Carolina in decades … Is the state running out of money? No. We’re actually having a surplus. What we have proven is that by by cutting taxes and cutting regulations — President Reagan showed us this in the ’80s — to actually increase economic prosperity, you actually increase the amount of revenue that you see produced.”

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Cooper and Democratic legislative leaders decried the budget, which they contend did not do enough to adequately fund state government — particularly public schools — and that teacher pay raises were nowhere near as generous as Republican lawmakers extolled.

Moore defended budgets passed by the GOP-controlled General Assembly and the decision to increase the state’s rainy day fund, which he said proved the right course in the wake of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.

“We didn’t necessarily want to spend it all,” he said of the surpluses. “That is what took so long (this year). Do we want to put it in the rainy day fund or cut taxes? What we did in the end was a compromise — put some in the rainy day fund and cut taxes.

“We were criticized by Gov. Cooper for putting money in the rainy day fund. But after a major hurricane hit and we needed the money, he suddenly quit talking about that. Had we budgeted like Democrats, we’d probably have to come into a special session and figure out what taxes we are going to have to raise to pay for hurricane relief. Even after paying for it, we still have $1.8 billion in the rainy day fund. You don’t want to spend every dime you have. We also got rid of some of the debt we have.””

Democrats will continue to grasp at anything to paint Republican policies as ‘mean-spirited’ because they cannot rely on the success or popularity of their Leftist ideologies to aid them at the polls.

But it will be hard for any Democrat to argue that Republican reforms at the state level have been a giant step in the right direction as far as freedom and economics are concerned. Complicating their messaging further is the fact that Cooper is at the top of the pyramid, making it likely he will attempt to take credit for an economy that is thriving under conservative reforms.

Though Republican leadership on Jones Street leaves much to be desired for consistent conservatives, it pales in comparison to the absolute mess North Carolina would be in if Democrats were at the helm.

Read the rest of Speaker Moore’s comments here.