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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Boomer with Attitude / News The billion-dollar elephant in the room
Posted By John Grooms on Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:18 PM
Gov. Beverly Perdue and the rest of the political whizzes in Raleigh are projecting a budget deficit of up to a billion dollars this year. The solution? Probably big cuts in education, public health programs, infrastructure, and God knows what-all. Here’s another thought we hope the legislature considers: A report from the General Assembly’s Fiscal Research Division reveals that in 2008-09, North Carolina spent more than a billion dollars on tax breaks for specific companies and specific industries. It was part of the state’s “economic development strategy” — and doesn’t even include direct payments to companies as incentives.
These tax breaks should be front and center when lawmakers start looking for cuts — especially when you consider that cuts to public health programs (Medicaid, Children’s Special Health Care Needs Services, Mental Health Services, etc.) have a terrible impact on families, as well as on employment, education, and other areas. These business tax breaks, not to mention incentives for new companies, need to be on the chopping block, too, rather than balancing the budget in the traditional way, i.e., on the backs of kids and the poor.
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