Governor Pat McCrory has been touting his Carolina Comeback for about two years. John Locke Foundation President John Hood and House Rules Chair David Lewis have been bragging about all of the taxes North Carolinians didn’t pay. To hear conservatives tell it, North Carolina is on a roll.
To hear middle class families, though, we’re stuck in a rut. In North Carolina, Republican policies have put the middle class in decline. Incomes are falling, not rising. Wages are stagnant and the jobs being created pay less and have fewer benefits than the ones lost to trade agreements and the Great Recession. The tax cuts have gone disproportionally to the wealthy while funding for public schools and universities have been cut.
According to a recent study, the highest earning households have seen their income increase 3.3% since 2010 and they received more than half of all the income during that period. The middle 20% of households have seen their income drop by 1.8%. That’s what income inequality looks like. The rich get richer while the middle class gets poorer.
It’s trickle down theory at its purest. Shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class and eventually all the prosperity will flow to the rest of the population. In North Carolina, too many families are still waiting.
Hood and company call it freedom. In their telling, everybody gets to spend their money like they want to. But that only works if you have disposable income. For an increasing number of families, all of their income goes to necessities while the vehicles for economic upward mobility remain elusive. College gets more expensive and public schools get shortchanged.
The country is in an unequal recovery. Republicans in North Carolina are making it worse for working families here. Incomes are falling for those who have suffered the most and rising for those who survived the Great Recession relatively unscathed. The middle class in North Carolina is getting run over by the Carolina Comeback.
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 >
For your edification, Ebrun, a “spinster” is a somewhat derogatory term for a elderly woman who has never married.
That clarified, you are THE “spin-master” here, with very little understanding of political realities, of the role of the branches of government here in the US, and of legislative powers and processes. I do not suffer from the same affliction.
In many ways during most of the Obama presidency, the GOP US House has indeed controlled much of federal government budgeting and spending, as well as a fair degree of federal agency functioning, via its say on annual appropriations to executive agencies.
Also in the same way, the NCGOP has been in near total control over state government since early 2011. With its super-majority since that time, the GOP not only has had total control of the state budget (including making cuts on appropriations to executive agency programs and staffing), but it could easily–and did easily–overrule Perdue vetoes.
Right about Bev Perdue and the GOP General Assembly in 2011. I still remember that the Republicans voted to let the temporary sales tax increase expire on time and overrode Perdue, who wanted to extend the “temporary” increase.
Not so right about the GOP and federal spending. There has been no budget approved by the Congress in quite a while, Spending levels have been established through an Omnibus catch all bill near the end of the session. Republican attempts to cut spending were thwarted by a Democrat controlled Senate until 2015 and now by Obama, who threatens a government shutdown if spending is cut. Unfortunately, the Republicans have backed down and let the Democrats and Obama continue their profligate spending.
Ebrun, please, I spent years as a lobbyist registered with the US House Clerk’s Office in D.C. and learned a thing or two about budgeting and appropriations in a highly politicized environment. So it’s quite easy to see how you are spinning things again…
There has been no “budget bill” passed in recent years. So what? Not passing one doesn’t mean the government stops and goes unfunded. A negotiated budget bill is not necessary to consider and pass annual appropriations bills (whether or not they are lumped into a omnibus appropriations bill or just considered as separate smaller appropriations bills). And that has been exactly the way the federal government has been funded recently.
And, despite your claim that those bills advanced “profligate spending” by Obama/Dems, those bills resulted in real, hurtful, level funding or, in many cases, outright cuts of agency budgets.
And your stating that “Republican attempts to cut spending were thwarted by a Democrat controlled Senate until 2015” conveniently (and I say deliberately) disregards the sequestration agreement, which DID restrict spending. You just seem to want to mislead in every way on every comment thread, you know?
Anticipating a brutally “spun” retort full of the little mind and word games you always play, I’ll have no more of it, and am done with this thread. As far as I am concerned, it’ll just be another one that has been diverted off course and laid to waste…….
I don’t care whether you’re done or not. I’ll continue to respond to your spin and misinformation. And BTW, I spent a few years working in D.C. myself. The Sequester agreement was negotiated between the GOP, Democrats and the White House. It was a compromise. It was not dominated by Republican budget priorities.
You claim Republican policies dominated federal budget and spending levels since they took over the U.S. House in 2011.. That’s not true. Almost every annual spending bill was the result of a compromise between Republicans, Democrats and the White House.
Once again you’re commenting on something you know little or nothing about. D.g. But you do seem obsessed with my former job title and MA degree. Back then, I held a position in the Federal Civil Service and received an MA from the University of Maryland, which offered graduate level courses to federal employees after working hours.
D.g., your lectures are long, tedious and redundant. I stop reading after the 2nd paragraph. Try to remember that brevity can greatly enhance your communication skills.
A post I wholeheartedly agree with. I hope you will be voting the remedies into law in less than a year with no fear of veto. Go Team!
What a disingenuous crock of partisan misinformation. Use national economic statistics from 2010 till now and blame NC Republicans for the sluggish national economy. Have liberals already forgotten that during this entire period a Democrat administration has been in power in Washington?
So just ignore economic trends that show NC doing much better than the nation as a whole. But the real numbers show that NC had the sixth fastest rate of new jobs created since the start of 2013. They show that per capita income in NC increased 15% faster than the national average, the 6th fastest among the 50 states.
And the new jobs created in NC have been private sector jobs financed mostly through substantial private investment. There have been no massive state subsidies given to foreign corporations to locate new plants here.
National publications that focus on economic development rank NC at or near the top of their lists of states. Site Selection magazine rates NC number one for new business. Forbes rates us number 2. Chief Executive rates NC third for business while Ernst and Young rank NC third best state for low tax burden. Even CNBC rates NC fifth best state for business.
This has all been accomplished while state taxes have been cut substantially, while the state’s debt has been reduced by over a billion dollars, while our $1.2 billion debt to the federal government for unemployment compensation has been paid off and while millions have been set aside to bolster the state’s rainy day fund.
NC’s economy is on a roll. Liberals should grin and bare it rather than resorting to negative and misleading partisanship.
D.g., Just more partisan opinion with no stats to back up your claims.
You know how it is Disgusted. He/she use statistics to back up his/her claims; which has no statistical relevance whatsoever. To wit: “…per capita income in NC increased 15% faster than the national average, the 6th fastest among the 50 states.” What he/she doesn’t want to show is, where NC ranked before it started it’s climb and despite such phenomenal growth, how much we are still behind.
Hence the glowing revelation that we’re growing. Perhaps, but we’re still behind. That’s what he/she’s not telling nor wants to admit.
That’s like taking 3 steps. 1 forward, 2 back; then claiming a 33% advance when in reality you’re 50% behind where you first started.
NC may have been “way behind” before the GOP took over state government in 2013. But how can anyone credibly blame Republicans for that? In short, NC is now progressing faster than most of the other 50 states. While liberals may not want to give the GOP credit for this trend, it’s absurd to criticize NC Republicans when, under their leadership, the state is experiencing faster economic growth than the Nation as a whole.
NC’s unemployment rate is at 5.6%, higher than the contiguous states of SC, VA and GA, and also higher than more than half the 50 states and the national average of 4.9%. So, saying that the state is “now progressing faster than most of the other 50 states, and “is experiencing faster economic growth than the Nation as a whole” is misleading.
And, BTW, the NCGOP took over legislative control in Nov 2010, which means their appropriations, budget, and tax manipulations have been underway since January of 2011, not in 2013 as claimed.
Yes, while the GOP has controlled the General Assembly since 2011, the Democrats controlled the executive branch of state government until 2013. So the GOP has been in total control of state government for only three years. And the state income tax cuts, which have been a primary impetus for economic growth, did not pass until 2013 after a Republican Governor was in office, and did not take effect until 2014.
This governor has had little say in state budget appropriations, in state budgeting and in tax legislation, other than he signed GOP-led NCGA bills put on his desk. Again, to say that “GOP took over state government in 2013” and not in 2011 is cherry-picking a date of reference in trying to mislead.
That would be akin to saying the Dems were responsible for illegally gerrymandering the 1st and 12th congressional districts in 2011 because the GOP didn’t have total control of state government until 2012. Ooops….wait a minute! I see that you have essentially spun that little fib on another blog thread here.
Another example of your varying baseline dates in your posts so as to support pro-GOP points and undercut Dem points? Yes, me thinx so………
So for two years while the state was run by a Democrat administration and Democrat Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State and several other Council of State offices, the GOP was really in control. Right, and U.S. House Republicans controlled Washington even though Obama was President. What a spinster!
But there is little question that the policies instituted by the GOP, including the end of the temporary sales tax increase in 2011, put the state on the road to the steady and sustained economic growth that has occurred since 2013.
And since being taken over in 2011 the Governor’s Mansion has had zero relevance or input with the General Assembly, no matter which party occupies it.
Phil Berger is Lord of the Manor. His power is absolute and he will brook no interference from anyone…even if they have the title ‘Governor’ before their name.
Only in your distorted Conservative dreams.
Another profound observation. Obviously, a poster of few words.
Amen, preach it brother!
Amen. Preach it!