Out of all the accusations tossed back and forth during last night’s debate between Sen. Kay Hagan and Rep. Thom Tillis, I’d say Hagan’s charge that Tillis cut $500 million in education spending in North Carolina is the biggest because Hagan used a finite number to making a supposed statement of fact.
So is Hagan’s accusation true? Well, PolitiFact did some checking. Note who makes an appearance:
Reductions in federal and local education spending — as well as funding shifts due to rising charter school popularity — could also be a major reason why schools feel as if their funds have shrunk, despite a steadily increasing state budget, said Terry Stoops, director of research and education policy at the John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina think tank that promotes limited government. He added that between 2010 and 2013, federal funding to North Carolina schools dropped by $337.6 million.
Here’s the bottom line “(i)t’s important to note that the Legislature’s choosing to fund at levels lower than the continuation budget is not a literal budget cut. In raw dollars, the state is spending more money than in previous years.” In other words, when you give any government entity more money than they received the previous year but not as much as they asked for, then in their minds it’s a “cut.”
With that in mind, PolitiFact concludes Hagan’s statement is “literally wrong,” but considering N.C.’s budget “spent almost $500 million less than what was requested to maintain the status quo, accounting for inflation and increased costs of various services,” it was upgraded to “half true.”
And we remember what our mothers taught us about “half truths.”
