The North Carolina Budget and Tax Center
devoted more space to the governor’s budget proposal and the Senate
budget bill than we did. As usual, they are more than happy to see
spending increase and worry about ending the anything-but-temporary tax
increases from 2001.
Our friends find that the Senate budget
would add $400 million in recurring spending paid with non-recurring
funds. This is a problem we can agree on, regardless whether we would
cut spending or they would increase taxes. Again, higher spending leads
to higher taxes, which is why politics is about “spend and tax.”
The
problem with the BTC’s analysis is their continued insistence that per
capita General Fund spending adjusted for inflation remains below the
amount in FY2000. Per capita General Fund spending on operations was
just over $2,000 in FY2000, the budget in FY2006 surpassed that and the
proposals for FY2007 would exceed $2,100 even before adding any of the hundreds of pork bills sitting in the Senate and House.
