Fitzsimon File

House and Senate budget negotiators are still at it, scrambling to reach a final budget agreement and rumor mill is working overtime at the legislative building with whispers about the lottery, taxes, and the minimum wage the most prevalent.

It is not a rumor that the cigarette tax remains a sticking point, the Senate still insisting on a 35 cent increase and a group of House Democrats from Eastern North Carolina opposing anything higher than a 25 cent hike.  It is not clear why the holdouts are so resistant to the higher tax.  It is hard to believe is concern about their political future. They have agreed to raise the tax, so why would 35 cents be more politically risky than 25 cents?

The most likely answer is that the lawmakers are responding to the dubious claims of the tobacco industry lobbyists that the higher tax will cost the state jobs. What is true is that rejecting the lower tax will cost the state lives and millions of dollars.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids estimates that raising the tax by 35 cents instead of 25 cents would stop more than 13,000 from becoming addicted smokers and result in more than 7,000 current adult smokers giving up the deadly habit. The higher tax would also save the state $274 million in long term health care costs.

The federal tobacco buyout has made it virtually impossible for lawmakers to argue that raising the cigarette tax will hurt the state’s tobacco farmers. All the industry lobbyists can use now are the claims of economic ruin if taxes are increased. That doesn’t wash either, so the House opponents to the higher tax need to decide if they want to please the tobacco lobbyists or save teenager’s lives.

One of those Eastern Democrats is Rep. Edd Nye, who continues to standout  for his opposition to a wide range of common sense legislation, raising the minimum wage, suspending executions, funding the program that provides lifesaving medicine to people living with HIV/AIDS. Nye is a co-chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and is a key player in the budget negotiations with the Senate.

The latest insight into Nye’s view of the world came in his reaction to news that an error in the placement of a decimal point meant that lawmakers would have to find $30 million more than expected for Health Choice, the state health care program for children in working poor families.  Advocates have long pushed to move coverage for children under 5 into Medicaid so it would not be subject to budget whims of Nye and others every year..

Nye’s reaction to suggestions to move the children to Medicaid as part of the solution to the decimal point problems was that it would cause problems because enrollment in Medicaid can’t be limited.

Isn’t that the point of moving the kids there, to make sure every child under 5 gets health care instead of waiting to see if the General Assembly finds enough money for the kids to see a doctor?

Nye apparently sees health care for children as a burden that needs to be limited instead of an opportunity to make sure kids are healthy. Of course, he wouldn’t have to be so worried about paying for the coverage if he would support a higher cigarette tax increase.

It also not hard to be cynical about the latest remarks of Senator Kay Hagan, also an important budget negotiator. Hagan was responding to the news that the final budget will not include the cuts to services to the aged, blind, and disabled that she had been defending, and said that the Senate wanted to do what it could for the least fortunate, but had to rein in costs.

Do what it could? This is a Senate budget that cut the services to the most vulnerable people in the state to help pay for a tax for the most fortunate, the wealthiest people in the state, not to mention a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Doesn’t seem like the Senate wanted to do what it could for the poor, sounds like it wanted to help the people who need help the least and make the poor pay for it.

 
Speaking of tax cuts, the rumor mill has the Senate proposing to lower the income tax on the richest taxpayers, those with an average income of $813,000 a year, and increasing the state minimum wage by a dollar. It is a tempting offer of course. The $5.15 minimum wage is a disgrace and means that a person can work fulltime and still live in poverty.

But cutting taxes on the wealthy to pay for it means the state will have less money to provide health care for kids, help families find affordable housing, and tackle the shameful high school dropout rate.  The wealthy people in North Carolina seem to be making out ok these days. Let’s help the folks who are not, the people at the other end of the economic ladder.

Finally, the North Carolina Republican Party is understandably using the budget deadlock to criticize the state’s Democratic leadership. Democrats control the House and Senate and the Governor’s office, so the attacks are not entirely unjustified. But they might be a little harder to dismiss if they Republicans had a plan of their own to solve the state’s budget crisis instead of simply relying on worn out clichés about a spending problem and waste in government.

They did not support the House or Senate budget and have not offered any comprehensive alternatives, no significant amendments during the budget debates and no proposals during the negotiations.

Their complaints about being locked out of the process are no excuse. They seem to have a lot of time on their hands these days. Why not release a detailed alternative spending plan to the public so we can see what specifics back up the no-tax, slash government rhetoric?

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2005 at 7:05 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.