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  • From: "Common Sense Foundation" <leftwich@ibiblio.org>
  • To: <common-sense@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Consider This: Budget Cuts Still Being Felt
  • Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 16:47:48 -0500

Consider This...


BUDGET CUTS STILL BEING FELT


Just what is at stake when state government gives away millions of
dollars worth of freebies to huge corporations? Who pays for that
grotesque largesse?

--Thousands of N.C. families are on waiting lists for promised
child-care subsidies, with more than 3,000 in Mecklenburg County alone.
Parents usually cannot work if they cannot find affordable child care,
thus placing a much greater burden on an already-strained system.

--School systems around the state are facing huge budget cuts. Watauga
County's school system had to find nearly half a million dollars in
cuts, including several teacher positions. This when the governor
promised that budget cuts would "hold classrooms harmless."

--Community colleges took major cuts. Mitchell Community College was
ordered to cut $150,000 from its budget despite achieving 7% enrollment
growth last year on one campus alone. When jobs are lost, retraining
needs increase, so community colleges need more money, not less.

At a time when food-stamp qualification is at an all-time high,
particularly in western North Carolina; at a time when the state has had
double-digit percentage losses in manufacturing jobs; and at a time when
state assistance resources are stretched to the breaking point, state
leaders have still somehow found piles of money to give away to big
business.

Free-market fans wave away these concerns and say that the market will
provide for everyone, but private charities across the state, from
Crisis Assistance Ministry to Food Bank of North Carolina, are reporting
that they are turning needy people away in record numbers because their
agencies' resources are exhausted.

It's obvious that state government is not meeting its most basic
obligations to North Carolinians. These needs make corporate welfare so
much more offensive and outrageous. Erasing the cigarette export tax
credit, to name just one loophole, would eliminate some of the
aforementioned budget holes.

Yet corporate lobbyists keep getting whatever they ask for. State
policymakers might be able to excuse this behavior if there were any
credible evidence that corporate welfare helped workers in the long run.
But they don't cite any such evidence because there isn't any.

2003 will be remembered as a year in which the corporate gravy train
shifted into high gear in North Carolina, leaving behind education,
health care, child care, and environmental protection. A massive
redistribution of wealth from the poor to the super-rich is underway,
and instead of stopping that gravy train, state leaders are the
engineers.

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  • Consider This: Budget Cuts Still Being Felt, Common Sense Foundation, 12/19/2003

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