From Monday?s Daily Journal on the state?s supposedly serious budget impasse:
Perdue?s position is for show. Like her earlier efforts to ingratiate
herself with the teachers union and other Democratic base voters by
calling for a $1.5 billion tax hike, the governor?s last-minute demands
are theatrical policy, not fiscal policy. She will eventually sign a
budget virtually identical to what the Democrats in the General
Assembly have concocted. The income-tax surcharge will survive in some
form. Most of the new revenues will come from the sales-tax hike.
Republicans will vote against the deal en masse, joined in their position by most North Carolina voters.And it won?t take until September to make this deal ? unfortunately.
From today?s News & Observer report:
Legislative leaders reached a basic agreement on a tax plan late
Wednesday that limits a proposed 2 percent income tax surcharge to
North Carolinians who earn more than $250,000 a year.“There’s a
broad agreement,” said Bill Holmes, spokesman for House Speaker Joe
Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat. “There are still a couple small things
they want to talk about. It’s an agreement in principle.”The
plan otherwise resembles a compromise that fell apart last week but
that includes a 1-cent increase in the sales tax, a 10-cent-per-pack
increase in the cigarette tax, higher taxes on alcohol and a tax on
digital downloads and online purchases. It raises $990 million for the
state.
