As a potential veto of the proposed state budget looms over Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue’s Raleigh office, one unanswered question persists: why bother, Bev?
If she decides to veto, it will almost certainly have no practical impact on the bill’s fate. Republicans and their allies hold veto-proof majorities in both houses of the state legislature.
Perdue has repeatedly reiterated that she will not support a budget that sends the state’s public education system backwards. So when Republican leaders announced that all funding for K-12 teachers and teachers’ assistants would be restored, an assumption that the controversy had largely been neutralized wouldn’t have seemed unreasonable.
But the revisions proved to be insufficient to decisively change the governor’s mind, and the threat of a veto still looms, even though it is merely symbolic.
It’s time for a reality check.
It’s true that education is the single most important function that modern government serves in the everyday lives of its constituents. But among the seas of American idealism, leaders should not lose sight of one immutable fact: budgeting is a zero-sum game. When one program is funded, an equivalent amount is drawn out of the state’s coffers.
So when those same coffers run dry, legislators are faced with three options for making up the difference: run up debt, increase taxes or trim spending.
The first two options have been thoroughly exhausted. In the words of N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis, “Countless budgets were churned out under the philosophy of increased government spending and increased taxes. Democrat leaders clung rigidly to this mantra in the hope that it would succeed. It has failed.”
Spending has been allowed to snowball for decades under the misguided notion that since education is a vital and treasured function of the state, it should be allowed to transcend many of the normal constraints and expectations associated with government-funded programs.
