The Fiscal Year 2015 State Budget Undermines North Carolina’s Competitiveness

State investments in education, health care, infrastructure and other priorities are essential for economic opportunity and quality of life. Yet, North Carolina’s 2015 state budget is unsustainable and inadequate. It undermines North Carolina’s economic competitiveness by not meeting the needs of North Carolina families and communities. This will continue to be a problem until state leaders recognize the damage their 2013 tax plan is causing and take action to correct it.

In 2013, the NC General Assembly and Governor McCrory implemented more than $2 billion in tax giveaways that primarily benefit wealthy individuals and profitable corporations. Now, it turns out the tax cuts are going to cost all of us much more. Fiscal Research Division, the state agency in charge of estimating how much tax changes will cost, now says the individual income tax giveaways will cost more than $5 billion over five years. Those losses put the state on an unsustainable path, making it impossible to restore the deep budget cuts to education, economic development, and care for our older adults, children, and families experiencing financial hardship.

Because these cuts for the fiscal year 2015 budget come on top of a series of damaging cuts that were enacted in fiscal year 2014, North Carolinians are already dealing with the fallout of legislators’ decisions. We need to talk about how these cuts are affecting our children, our schools, our neighbors, and our communities. Most importantly, when you hear state leaders claim that they made the right decisions for North Carolina, you must speak up.