Keep Arbitrary Tax & Spending Limits Out of North Carolina – Vote No on Senate Bill 607

A suite of severe changes to the state constitution laid out in Senate Bill 607 would undermine the foundations of the North Carolina economy and make our current challenges much worse. The bill changes the state constitution in three ways:

1. Limits spending on education, health, and other services through a rigid, arbitrary, and fundamentally flawed formula and requires a 2/3rd majority vote of legislators to override that formula
2. Caps the income tax at 5 percent, which significantly reduces the resources available to run our schools and maintain our priorities
3. Limits access to the state’s rainy day fund – the Emergency Savings Reserve Fund – by requiring a 2/3rd majority vote of legislators

These restrictive fiscal policies would hurt not help the economy by hamstringing the ability of the state to invest in the building blocks of economic growth and prosperity. These amendments would harm the economy everyday, making it harder and harder to pay for schools and higher education, for example.  By failing to make the investments needed to position the state to compete and innovate, the flawed spending limit and income tax cap will restrict our ability to grow new industries, capitalize on efficiencies in technology or the delivery of services and build the human capital necessary to grow. And limiting access to the rainy day fund in times of emergency leaves North Carolina without a fallback when the next recession hits.