RALEIGH – North Carolina liberals apparently believe that the state’s electorate is seething with resentment at the actions of the Republican-led General Assembly and will punish the GOP in the elections this November.
I doubt it. That’s not to say there aren’t angry North Carolina voters. With nearly a fifth of all working-aged adults either unemployed or underemployed, you can bet many voters are worried about their own economic futures or that of their family members and neighbors.
They may be angry at the political class for failing to respond adequately to the crisis. They may cast ballots for change, not continuity. But I suspect they will be thinking primarily of Washington politicians, of President Barack Obama and both parties in Congress. To the extent they apportion blame to state government, the main target of their ire is likely to be Gov. Bev Perdue, not the legislature.
Liberals disagree. They offer at least three lines of attack that they hope will catch fire with North Carolina voters.
First, they suggest that the Republican-led General Assembly enacted a 2011-12 state budget that harmed the economy by reducing spending and tax rates. Yes, that’s their argument. If the legislature had kept a temporary one-cent sales tax from expiring and left other taxes alone, they say, state government could have kept more people on the public payroll and thus boosted the economy through higher consumer spending and federal matching funds.
The past six months have not been kind to the Left’s argument here. Yes, public employment in North Carolina did drop by several thousand positions, but growth in private-sector employment more than compensated for the loss in public employment. It would be silly to attribute all the new private jobs to lower state tax rates, and GOP lawmakers haven’t fallen into that trap. It would also be silly, however, to deny that the lower taxes may have played a role in some of the upswing in the private economy.
To put things more simply: the Left predicted at the end of the legislative session that the state budget Republicans crafted would cause the unemployment rate to rise. But the unemployment rate has fallen. Perhaps it would have fallen even more if Perdue had gotten her way on the budget – economic analysis is largely a game of ceteris paribus, after all – but this is really not the kind of argument likely to sway voters.
Second, the Left argues that even if the GOP-crafted budget didn’t reduce overall employment in the state, it had other disastrous effects on education, health care, public safety, and daily life in North Carolina.
Again, the last six months have not been kind to the liberal position. The state’s public schools, colleges, and universities began their academic years as usual. Reductions in staffing and supplies have had some effect – some classes aren’t being offered, for example – but the results could hardly be considered catastrophic. Similarly, most Medicaid patients haven’t experienced much of a change in their care. Criminals are still being apprehended, prosecuted, and punished.
The argument never made logical sense anyway. As I observed at the time, Perdue’s budget plan responded to the state’s fiscal deficit by cutting state expenditures to 4 percent below the original 2011-12 baseline. Once the Republican-led General Assembly was done, their budget cut state expenditures to 6 percent below the baseline. In education, the difference between the two budget plans was even smaller – less than one percentage point.
Democrats are trying to turn these marginal differences into grounds for a social and political revolution. Good luck with that.
Finally, the Left is arguing that the Republican legislature has betrayed its original commitment to open, accountable government. Although the budget process, for example, was much improved in 2011 over previous sessions, the GOP has given its critics some grounds for criticism here. Still, like it or not, most North Carolina voters are unlikely to cast their ballots based on perceived threats to the fairness of legislative process.
After all, Mecklenburg County voters sent former House Speaker Jim Black back to Raleigh after the extent of his corruption became known. He didn’t just hold a sneaky midnight vote or two. He committed felonies.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.