That quote is from Gov. Beverly Perdue, as noted in a blog from Mark Binker of the Greensboro News-Record. The quote came in comments Perdue made to the N.C. School Boards Association in Greensboro about the debate over how to balance the state budget. Kudos to Binker for asking the governor to get specific about spending cuts. The governor’s response:
“Do you want to bleed away the system as we’ve done the past two years, where everybody takes an across-the-board 10 or 15 percent cut, and you do a fairly good amount of damage to every single piece of public services, or do you try to find the stuff that’s not essential?”
I asked for an example of the nonessential stuff in the schools.
“(I’m) not going to go there yet,” she said. “It’s too early to have all the advocacy groups coming out. Everybody has a friend.”
Ah yes, let the politics and lobbying begin.