Officials with the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency admitted Monday that it actually faces a $221 million shortfall rather than the $175 million budget deficit previously reported.
The first budget draft of the short session was released on Monday night with a primary focus on funding education and state agency salaries.
Questions and concerns have been raised over an event billed as “a drag queen story hour” for children as young as two at the North Carolina Museum of Art, funded in part by taxpayer dollars.
Does North Carolina have one of the biggest state budget deficits in the country? It depends on whom you ask, when you ask, and how you word the question.
Successful attempts to balance budgets rely almost entirely on reducing government expenditures, while unsuccessful ones rely heavily on tax increases.
To “spread the sacrifice evenly over the state workforce” is to fail to make critical distinctions – both among employees and among state programs.
We simply can’t afford our government at its current size and scope. Given our fiscal and economic situation, it’s impractical.
Perhaps Congress will surprise me and do the right thing. But I tend to doubt it.
There is nothing fiscally conservative about shoving a ramshackle budget through the General Assembly that assumes $3 billion worth of new taxes or federal borrowing in 2011.
