The troubling agreement behind the budget posturing

by Chris Fitzsimon, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, July 23, 2014.

Another week at the General Assembly,  another round of posturing on the budget , and another set of damaging and unnecessary budget cuts proposed because lawmakers are determined to give corporations and the wealthy yet another tax break.

That’s the summary of the latest moves in the House and Senate budget dance, as legislative leaders trade offers publicly and privately, moving closer together but still disagreeing on what to cut to pay for salary increases for teachers.

Last week the Senate publicly offered the House a plan that would give teachers an eight-percent pay raise partially funded by firing 3,700 teacher assistants and funding 3,700 more with one-time money, putting them at risk next year.  The original Senate budget included an 11-percent raise for teachers who gave up career status protections and wiped out funding for all 7,400 TAs this year.

The Senate scaled back its original proposal for cuts to Medicaid too, but the latest offer would still kick more than 5,000 aged, blind, and disabled people off the health care program.

Media accounts detailed a private House response to the Senate offer with House leaders proposing a seven percent teacher raise, with smaller pay increases for school administrators and deeper cuts to the already strapped university system to pay for it.

House leaders continue to proclaim that they will not support a budget that kicks vulnerable people off of Medicaid or makes cuts to the classroom by eliminating thousands of TAs.

Never mind that last year’s budget slashed funding for 3,800 TAs and 5,200 teaching jobs across the state.  This time, in an election year, House leaders are adamant about protecting the classroom.

Meanwhile Governor Pat McCrory continues to push a plan that House leaders also appear to support that would give teachers a raise in the neighborhood of six percent and give local school districts the option of using additional funding to increase the raise or keep teacher assistants in the second and third grades. McCrory met privately with Senate Republicans this week and it’s a safe bet that he was pushing the local option plan during the 90-minute meeting.

Despite the signs of the two sides coming closer to agreement, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger still says that not much has changed.  In a way he is right.

Neither the House nor the Senate is talking about the obvious solution, stopping the next round of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that take effect January 1.

That would raise $100 million in the next fiscal year and $300 million in the next calendar year and provide enough funding to give teachers a raise without firing TAs or kicking seniors with dementia off of Medicaid.  In an ideal world, legislative leaders would rethink last year’s massive and regressive tax cut package entirely, but the least they could do is not cut taxes again for millionaires who received a $10,000 break on average from last year’s tax changes.

But no one has brought it up, including most news accounts of the budget stalemate. Also generally missing from the discussion are the deep cuts that will be made to education this year, whichever side prevails in the budget debate.

The House budget slashes $293 million in public school funding from the budget adopted in 2013 and shifts lottery revenues to make up some of the difference, but not all of it. The Senate wants to cut $436 million in education funding.

This budget debate is really not about dramatically different priorities. House and Senate leaders both cut education funding last year and they both want to do it again.

And both sides believe that giving millionaires another tax break is more important than teacher raises or teacher assistants or funding for the universities or even health care for people who need it.

Those are all up for debate and negotiation. But not the next round of tax cuts. That’s off the table for House and Senate leaders and Gov. McCrory.

Corporations and the wealthy will get another tax break. That apparently has been decided. The only question left is how much schools and vulnerable seniors will suffer to pay for it.

http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/07/23/the-troubling-agreement-behind-the-budget-posturing/