• For the last 30 years North Carolina has seen spending grow three times faster than population and inflation.
• Implementing a new tax system for North Carolina, JLF’s consumption-based USA Tax of 6 percent would remove the personal, corporate, and inheritance taxes. Applying the free market spending priorities within JLF’s alternative budget would save nearly $500 million in the next budget year and more than $1 billion over two years while dropping the sales tax to 4 percent and reducing the franchise tax 60 percent in fiscal year 2014-15.
• Removing state aid for special interests and non-government functions would save the state more than $80 million and redirect that to the Savings and Reserves account.
• The bottom-line spending figure for JLF’s 2013-14 General Fund budget plan is $20.1 billion, $490 million less than the governor’s proposal. JLF would decrease General Fund spending by 0.2 percent, compared to McCrory’s 2.2 percent increase. Total state spending would decrease in both plans.
• In the second year of the two-year budget plan, JLF’s proposal would spend $560 million less than McCrory’s plan. General Fund spending is $1.05 billion less in the Locke Foundation plan than in the McCrory plan over the course of the two-year budget cycle.
• This budget offers 19 specific policy recommendations in K-12 education, early childhood programs, public safety, Medicaid, transportation, and state employee benefits. Among them: eliminate class size mandates, revise NC Pre-K income eligibility criteria to target children with the greatest needs, re-establish drug courts, divert mentally ill individuals into community-based care rather than jails, cut Medicaid services not required by the federal government, and require state employees to pay a portion of their health care premiums.
Spotlight 433 Budget for Growth: JLF plan redirects funds, cuts taxes to create jobs by John Locke Foundation
