RALEIGH – Whatever happens in the November elections, the North Carolina General Assembly will be under intense pressure by the state’s spending lobbies to raise taxes.

You can already see the outlines of the argument now: given that most of the state budget goes to education, health care, and public safety, there is no feasible way to close next year’s $3 billion+ budget deficit without tax hikes.

If Democrats hold on to one or both chambers of the General Assembly on Election Day, they’ll be urged to raise taxes because the voters have implicitly approved previous tax increases to balance the budget. And if Republicans win one or both legislative chambers, they’ll be urged to raise taxes because the voters couldn’t have known that the GOP’s no-new-taxes promise was infeasible.

No matter who wins, legislative leaders should ignore the spending lobbies and commit themselves to closing North Carolina’s budget gap without further worsening the state’s tax burden. Gov. Bev Perdue may be pursuing political theatrics rather than fiscal responsibility with her order to state agencies to prepare for cuts as high as 15 percent of the budget, the current estimated size of next year’s deficit. But legislative leaders should welcome and facilitate her efforts to prepare a 2011 budget without new taxes.

Why do I say such a budget is feasible? Because my JLF colleagues and I have looked at the numbers. We know there is at least $3 billion worth of low-priority spending in North Carolina’s state budget that can be eliminated without endangering the core responsibilities of government. We also know that other states, such as New Jersey and Indiana, have already blazed the trail in the past year, enacting some of the permanent reductions in the size and scope of state government that North Carolina should emulate.

While it is true that the vast majority of state spending goes to various education, health care, and public safety programs, that doesn’t mean these programs are equally effective. Some deliver few if any significant benefits to the taxpaying public.

Here is a broad outline of where North Carolina lawmakers can go to find significant savings in next year’s budget:

• The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on administration, ancillary programs, and other non-teaching positions in North Carolina’s public schools. These budget lines should be significantly reduced, so that we focus our education spending on classroom instruction.

• The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year funding research of questionable value and subsidizing the education of disproportionately wealthy students in the University of North Carolina system. UNC’s budget should be brought into line with that of most other state university systems in the country, with taxpayer dollars focused on classroom instruction and users paying a fairer and more practical price for post-secondary education.

• The state spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year funding one of the most expensive Medicaid programs in the Southeast. While funding a basic health care safety net has long been a fiscal commitment in North Carolina, there is no reason why our program needs to be so broad and costly. Let’s follow the lead of other states and bring our Medicaid costs in line.

• The state spends hundreds of millions of dollar a year subsidizing politically favored businesses with targeted tax breaks, direct cash grants, and pass-through support by tax-supported nonprofits. To avoid raising the average tax burden, lawmakers should replace the targeted tax incentives with an across-the-board reduction in the corporate tax rate – but the cash grants and nonprofit subsidies should disappear now.

There are plenty of other places to go for savings in the state budget, such as reorganizing the executive branch, merging duplicative programs and agencies, excising obvious waste and abuse, and reducing taxpayer support for recreational and leisure services consumed by few North Carolinians.

But I reject the notion that it isn’t feasible to find billions of dollars in savings in education, health care, and public safety. We have a $21 billion budget for general operations. A 15 percent cut may be painful, but it has been done – and in North Carolina, it must be done.

We simply can’t afford our government at its current size and scope. Given our fiscal and economic situation, it’s impractical.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.