The North Carolina Senate released a state budget this week that makes government live within its means and puts more money in the pockets of taxpayers, while protecting essential public services.
Among others, our budget makes three responsible, long-overdue changes.
First, it reforms North Carolina’s broken education system. An educated workforce is vital to our state’s future. But our system isn’t working; it’s ranked near the bottom in national graduation rates. Instead of dumping more money on a failing system, we’re making reforms. We’re fostering early childhood education by adding more than 1,000 teachers to classrooms in grades one through three. We’re implementing a program to ensure students can read by fourth grade, making them much more likely to graduate. To hold teachers to high standards, we’re developing a program to pay them for performance, not seniority. And we’re adding five days to the school year.
Our plan right-sizes state government. By saving more than $1 billion, we’re getting government off the backs of job-creating businesses. We’re eliminating vacant positions, consolidating departments and reducing administrative costs and bureaucracy. Spending money wisely allows us to add teachers to classrooms and fully fund the state retirement system for the first time in years.
Finally, our budget slashes taxes and returns more than $1 billion to the private sector, where it will help businesses create thousands of new jobs. For too long, bloated government has prevented tax cuts that will get North Carolinians back to work and allow the private sector to pull us out of the recession.
— Sen. Tom Apodaca
Raleigh
I don’t see anything here about restricting suffrage, supplanting Buncombe County’s 200-year-old system of governance with no local referendume or input, or requiring a waiting period for abortion.
Mr. Apodaca, the “jobs” your party has been doing to our state have very little to do with employment.
I’ve heard the same rhetoric about slashing taxes in the private sector to create jobs for fifteen years. They’ve gotten tax breaks over and over….so where are the jobs???
Just be honest, you’re giving kick backs to the people who gave you lots of money, and don ‘t really give a damn about people who make less money
“…our budget slashes taxes and returns more than $1 billion to the private sector, where it will help businesses create thousands of new jobs.”
Step right this way, folks…we have new and improved snake oil! Guaranteed* to create scads of new jobs, eliminate wrinkles and put a new spring into your step!
“Contrary to the claims of Senate leadership, cutting taxes will not create jobs. That’s because any jobs created through tax cuts will be more than offset by the jobs lost by cutting back on vital public investments. As the Budget and Tax Center reported a few weeks ago, the one-sided analysis used to support the claim that tax cuts will create jobs completely ignored the economic and jobs impact of cutting public investments and greatly overstated the impact of tax cuts on jobs.
Not only will the Senate tax-cut plan fail to create the jobs North Carolina needs, it also fails to address the long-term shortcomings of the state’s revenue system. The proposal on the personal income tax is not a first step to modernization. Instead of closing or limiting ineffective tax loopholes, the Senate tax plan only changes the tax forms necessary to take advantage of them by converting the basis for calculating income taxes from federal taxable income to Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) while retaining all but a few loopholes.
Furthermore, two-thirds of the benefits of the proposal to cut the state’s personal income tax rates would benefit households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. Furthermore, the resulting loss of more than $400 million in annual revenue forces even more drastic and unnecessary cuts in public investments without any promise of creating jobs.”
http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2011/05/26/budget-and-tax-center-statement-on-senate-tax-package/
* This claim has not been verified by independent testing, and are for marketing purposes only.
Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts! I think I’m gonna puke. Senator Apodaca, you make me sick. You, and your kind preach this gospel of tax cuts being the cure for everything. Jobs? Where are these freaking tax cut induced jobs? At the school where my wife works I’m seeing some tax cut based JOB CUTS. All your tax cuts do is drain the state’s coffers. This has the effect of shifting the burden of providing services to the local governments and inevitably to cuts in the services that we, as a society, want and need. So the rich get richer and those of us out here struggling to make a living get less and less. All the while, we watch our social safety net get undermined by a bunch of rich slobs who can’t even relate.
(BTW… Good play on the “Women’s Right to Know” anti-abortion bill. That will keep a large segment of NC’s population lulled into supporting you guys, while you quietly work against their REAL best interests. Well, I suppose if things get really bad, at least I can go to the payday lender.)
I would also like an explanation on how de-funding education is realistically make NC schools better. Kids are already forced to bring materials into school. I mean really, are we to believe we just spend too much on education, and we tax the wealthiest people too much. I’m calling b.s.
“I would also like an explanation on how de-funding education is realistically make NC schools better.”
There is no intent to make schools better. Today’s extremist Teapublicans fear an educated and astute citizenry. They engage in Orwellian-speak, such as the ‘Women’s Right to Know’, pointed out by WitchDoctor.
“Jobs” doesnt mean ‘well paying’.
“Just be honest, you’re giving kick backs to the people who gave you lots of money, and don ‘t really give a damn about people who make less money”
You say that as if it’s a bad thing. Mr. Apacaca is doing exactly as the free market dictates. That is: Selling his services to the highest bidder. Would you have him work for peanuts servicing the plebes?
Just be honest, you’re giving kick backs to the people who gave you lots of money, and don ‘t really give a damn about people who make less money
Prez Obie is the king of that game …
http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/06/15/report-claims-white-house-gave-kickback-administration-jobs-donors