The Senate Budget Doubles Down on What Works
Tax cuts, responsible spending, reduced regulation: It worked for the past 14 years. Don’t stop now.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The Senate budget, released last night, doubles down on the formula that helped usher in a boom decade-and-a-half for North Carolina under strong conservative leadership.
For years, North Carolina has enjoyed a self-reinforcing cycle kicked off by the Reform Majority’s tax and spending overhaul when they first took charge. The cycle goes something like this:
Economy-friendly policies and lower taxes attract families and job creators to North Carolina.
Those families and job creators lead to a growing population and economy.
That growth yields a string of state budget surpluses, even with lower tax rates.
The Reform Majority uses that growth to lower tax rates even further, while making responsible investments in education and infrastructure.
This isn’t just some academic theory: This is the philosophy that has guided lawmakers for nearly 15 years, and the positive results are plain for all to see.
Here are what we see as the pillars of this proposal:
Cuts the income tax rate and sets in law a gradual reduction to 2.99% by 2028.
Continues to resource the State Capital and Infrastructure Fund, which is one of the unsung heroes of savvy fiscal policy (the account allows the state to fund capital projects with cash over the long-term, rather than debt).
Expands promising early childhood literacy curriculum to fourth- and fifth-graders. It’s this curriculum that underpins the “Mississippi Miracle,” and that former Gov. Roy Cooper foolishly blocked for two years in North Carolina.
Last but not least, the budget includes health policy reforms to address the crisis we’ve been talking about for the better part of a year: North Carolina’s highest-in-the-nation health costs.
The budget would fold in health reforms the Senate advanced earlier this year that deal with provider billing transparency, collection practices, and onerous “facility fees” charged to patients.
It also eliminates certificate of need, one of the biggest and most absurd drivers of North Carolina’s out-of-control health costs.
Here’s how Senate Leader Phil Berger described it during yesterday’s press conference: “The very idea that there’s a government bureaucrat somewhere that can tell us with any degree of accuracy how many hospital beds we need in a certain place. . .It’s our belief that most of the actors in the health care space are sophisticated market participants and they can make decisions as to what is an appropriate level for them to have.”
We couldn’t agree more.
