Is ANYONE serious about getting our financial house in order? (Anyone, at all?)

It’s pretty safe to say that conservative ideas are what propelled the GOP to a position of power in North Carolina and the United States.  Most of the GOP’s greatest victories in Raleigh and at the national level have come as the result of promises of action based on conservative ideas.

Granted, there is diversity in the party.  Some folks are pro-life, and some favor some amount of abortion.  Some people have a problem with the gay lifestyle, while others do not.  Some people favor the death penalty, while some others do not.  But fiscal conservatism — wise stewardship of the public purse – has supposedly been the tie that binds Republicans together.  With GOP majorities in Raleigh and DC, it seems even that idea is falling by the wayside.

It’s late September.  Our state budget was due in July.  Republicans control the legislative branch.  Yet, we can’t seem to produce an agreement to tighten the pursestrings in state government. Reports are out there that each chamber of the legislature is hung up on whether or not to: (1) expand Medicaid, and (2) build a new children’s hospital for Duke and UNC:

[…] Why it matters: This summer, when it became clear that a full budget was not happening, state lawmakers agreed to put $600 million toward Medicaid rebase funding as part of a mini-budget.

• That figure, however, is short of the $819 million Medicaid funding needed to keep the current level of services, NC Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai said last month.

• If more rebase funding isn’t directed toward Medicaid, Sangvai said, cuts to services and to health providers will be necessary come Oct. 1. Republicans have called the potential cuts premature and politically motivated. (DHHS is part of Gov. Josh Stein’s cabinet.)

State of play: Rebase funding, put simply, is how much money is needed to keep providing Medicaid to the same people at the same level as last year. It’s a regular part of the state’s budgeting cycle.

• An effort to put more money toward Medicaid rebase funding appears to be hung up on additional spending the N.C. Senate wants for the future NC Children’s hospital in Apex and funding for N.C. Cares, a program that supports rural hospitals.
• “House appropriators and health leaders have proposed a plan to fully fund Medicaid and prevent the NCDHHS’ politically-motivated cuts,” Demi Dowdy, a spokesperson for House speaker Destin Hall, said in a statement to Axios. “We are hopeful that unrelated budget items will not hold up an agreement on this plan.”
• However, Senate Republicans say they only want to include money that had already been approved in 2023.

Zoom in: In 2023, a state budget that was negotiated by Senate leader Phil Berger and former House speaker Tim Moore approved around $103 million for the children’s hospital and another $105 million for N.C. Cares for this fiscal year using money from the American Rescue Plan Act.

• That spending, however, needs to be re-approved in the 2025 budget, and House Republicans, under new House speaker Destin Hall, want to re-evaluate the spending because of worries over declining state tax revenues.
• The children’s hospital is expected to cost around $3 billion to build. It’s already received more than $200 million from the state, but it is also seeking private funding from corporate and philanthropic donations. […]

Before they caved to Roy Cooper and expanded Medicaid, these folks in the General Assembly were TOLD TOLD TOLD that expansion would put the taxpayers on the hook for MO’ MONEY, MO’ MONEY for the foreseeable future.  (Prior to the big cave, North Carolina was already renowned for having some of the most generous Medicaid benefits in the nation.) 

And look what’s transpired.

This children’s hospital thing is clearly a political payoff to cronies.  When and where was a need established for this project?   Right now, according to US News & World Report, North Carolina has at least EIGHT existing children’s / pediatric hospitals (including one each at Duke and UNC, the partners in this current venture).

Let’s transition to the city by the Potomac.  We haven’t had an actual federal budget passed since the late 1990s.

As a reminder, HERE is where our impending national economic disaster currently stands.

The game both parties in DC like to play goes like this:  (1) waste a lot of time on investigations and other political sideshow antics, and then (2) at the very last minute, whip up hysteria about the need to extend the current rate of spending to avoid – *God forbid* – a government shutdown.  

(Those deals are good for a handful of months, and then we just go through this ALL OVER AGAIN.)

Just like clockwork, that’s where we are now.  The GOP controlled House passed a “stopgap spending measure”.  In the Senate, similar “stopgap” spending measures proposed by each of the two parties got shot down. (For some reason, at least eight members of the Senate didn’t even bother to vote.)

Since January – time could have been spent on ramming Trump’s nominees through and codifying the work of DOGE to trim government.  *But WHO, among the professional political class, really wants THAT?*

We can continue to shrug it all off and keep letting them get away with this.  Or we could use our tremendous power as voters and actually DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.