The Republicans in the state senate made school children the whipping boys for Senate Democrats. When Democrats, who are deeply in the minority, held up passing the budget in an attempt to add amendments that would provide more funding for schools, Republicans jammed through an amendment of their own stripping education funding in Democratic districts. In other words, the Republican Senate took out their frustrations on school kids.
According to the News and Observer, the GOP amendment “strips $316,646 from two early college high schools in Northampton and Washington counties, and it specifically bans state funding from supporting a summer science, math and technology program called Eastern North Carolina STEM.”
Understand that Washington and Northampton Counties are two of the state’s poorest areas. They both have large African-American populations. There’s very little political risk to the GOP but there is serious damage to people in these areas if these cuts stay in the budget that comes out of the House.
To Republicans, the move is just political gamesmanship and they’re punishing their Democratic opponents. To the people affected, the cuts are real and they hurt struggling communities. For a party that’s regularly accused of lacking empathy, the GOP seems pretty tone deaf. That’s what a gerrymandered majority will do for you.
The punishment they meted out to those counties, though, is really just a reflection of the GOP’s priorities in general. Since taking power in 2011, they’ve shown little concern about the poorest citizens of our state. They kicked thousands off of unemployment insurance when we didn’t have the jobs to absorb them. They refused to expand Medicaid for 500,000 even though the federal government was picking up the tab. They cut funding for public schools, leaving us near the bottom in terms of per pupil spending. They raised taxes on services like auto repairs that disproportionally hurt low-income families while cutting income taxes which disproportionally benefit our wealthiest citizens.
In punishing Democratic Senators for interfering with their political agenda, Republican really just reminded us of their political priorities. They are far more concerned with putting money into the pockets of the rich than helping the poor climb out of poverty. Their disregard for the people who struggle the most should be embarrassing but clearly, in North Carolina, the Republicans have no shame.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Admittedly, I was too young to understand all the laws during the Jim Crow era; but I can’t believe that this action by the GA can be constitutional. It stinks to heaven not just of partisan bullying, but of race and class discrimination. Is there any reason it can’t be immediately appealed to the federal courts? I’d consider it an honor to chip in toward the cost of an appeal–or are laws passed by raging bubbas on speed immune to the federal courts?
Unfortunately, the action seems to be based on “income” and not race, religion, or any class that would be the basis for a lawsuit. It may have a deliberately disparate impact, but the reduced lunch program is clearly income based for all children. Poverty is not a protected class in legal jargon.
I think a campaign to shame them might get further. Very few people will publicly support letting kids go hungry.
They demonstrate the South I left decades ago and had so hoped was mostly pass. The example in this article (and those in other press reports of that early AM budget choices from the GOP) is shameful. No person who calls him or her self a Christian could ever justify this. They are a disgrace.
nothing is surprising anymore with this rabble of racists in NC gop.