Senate Budget Catching Flak From All The Right Targets

RALEIGH – The N.C. House passed their budget, and then the N.C. Senate proffered their own; now the reconciliation between the two Republican-run chambers commences. But with a budget totaling nearly 900 pages and nearly $25 billion of spending, sifting through it to find pro’s and con’s is admittedly laborious. One quick way to judge the budget, however, is to examine who is taking aim at it and for what reasons.

Indeed, you only catch flak when you’re over the target, and, judging by the fire coming from the political Left, this budget does have line items Republicans and fiscal conservatives will find worthy of cheering for. To get a sense of which items those are, just take a look at the latest ‘Official Opinion of the Capitol Broadcasting Company‘ editorial which decries the “rigid ideology” of the senate’s budget.

As posted on WRAL:

CBC “official opinion-maker” CEO Jim Goodmon

“A budget, be it a modest household spending plan or a multi-billion dollar outlay for North Carolina government, is a statement of priorities.

The budget shoved through the state Senate certainly meets that criteria. It loudly speaks it is about:

    • Imposing rigid ideology;
    • Establishing partisan political dominance;
    • Continuing to lavish huge corporate welfare payments, in the form of unnecessary and unneeded tax cuts, on the state’s large businesses.
    • Enabling impulsive schemes without serious consideration of the consequences.
    • Settling scores with those with the temerity to question the Senate leadership cabal of Phil Berger, Harry Brown, Jerry Tillman, Brent Jackson and Ralph Hise. They are the masterminds behind the 895-page Tower of Babel-like budget outside of the public’s view. […]”

See? If CBC is telling readers that this Republican authored budget imposes, according to their blatant Leftist bias, “rigid political ideology,” “unnecessary and unneeded tax cuts,” and “political dominance,” what are Republican readers left to think except “Right on!”

Of course, this is coming from the same folks that compared Republicans to murderous authoritarian North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Taking that into account, the fact that any group of Democrats, like those at CBC, would criticize a Republican budget for imposing a rigid ideology is laughably hypocritical. First of all, the battle among opposing political philosophies is necessarily ideological. Those calling any group or person a rigid ‘ideologue’ almost exclusively stick to a rigid ideology of their own.

Are we to believe that, if Democrats had majorities in the N.C. General Assembly, they wouldn’t be writing budgets the advance their rigidly Big Government ideology? If you do, I have some swampland to sell you.

To be sure, Democrats are quite literally pushing their own ‘rigid ideology’ all the time, currently via Governor Roy Cooper’s bully pulpit, and Left-loving media like the CBC. Medicaid expansion, profligate spending on ‘investments’ in education and renewable energy, and hiking taxes on hardworking high-income-earners.

Exhibit A from the CBC editorial:

“The budget falls WAY short of the schools’ needs, doesn’t properly provide for school construction needs. The microscopic pay raises for teachers – barely half of what other state workers will receive – is a thinly veiled slap. […]

North Carolina corporations, which have already reaped millions and millions in tax breaks – taxpayer dollars no longer available to improve public schools or meet other critical needs state government should be covering, will see a $140 million cut in the state’s franchise tax. That’s on top of corporate income tax cut that has reduced annual collections from $1.4 billion in 2014 to just $430 million now. […]

The attack on support or interest in energy conservation or renewable energy is unabated. […] Even folks who own hybrid or electric vehicles are being attacked at the wallet. The owners of the 146,504 hybrid and 8,640 electric cars registered in the state already pay fees other car owners do not pay – and those will increase. The revenue generated – about $19 million is peanuts when it comes to road costs. If legislators must collect a premium (or is it a penalty?) from these alt-fuel vehicles, there should be a commitment to the infrastructure supporting them – particularly installing EV charging stations at all state rest areas and welcome centers. […]”

With flak like this from the media purveyors of Big Government and Social Justice dogma in North Carolina, much of the Senate budget seems to be right on target.

How dare those evil Republicans let businesses keep more of their earnings, steal less from taxpayers to give to alternative energy cronies, and put money away in a rainy-day fund!

If anything, the House and Senate budget simply aren’t dropping ordnance large enough on these targets. Just imagine the flak if state lawmakers actually returned surpluses to the taxpayers those revenues were taken from, or, say, actually shrank spending and the size of state government?

Read more of the Left’s whining flak at here.

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