The budget North Carolina will live under through June of 2017 will sharply constrain the state’s ability to make public investments crucial to promoting widespread prosperity and a growing economy.

The reason: tax cuts. All of the tax changes in the recently adopted state budget will reduce available revenue for the biennium by $841.8 million. Those are resources the state will not have for public education, community economic development, the court system, and other vital services that helped deliver broad economic gains to North Carolinians in the past.

Within four years the annual cost balloons to over $1 billion each year because of the phase in of rate reductions for individual taxpayers and profi table corporations. At this critical point in the state’s uneven and slow economic recovery, policymakers chose to deliver greater benefi ts to the wealthiest few rather than build a solid foundation that supports opportunity for many.