While MAGA cuts in DC, Raleigh is fattening up
Since 2017, we’ve been hearing talk from the General Assembly about revenue surpluses. Surpluses in revenue occur when they take too much money from us in April of each year.
Oh, we do get some half-hearted talk about giving the surplus back to the people. But that fades away as soon as the TV lights go off and the cameras leave.
There are some amazing moves toward cuts going down in DC. In Raleigh, we’ve got regular “revenue surpluses” we could kick back to the people. Or we could cut the tax rate so that money doesn’t get snatched from taxpayers in the first place. We’ve still got one of the highest gas taxes in the nation. We’ve got food taxes that are adding to the pain at the grocery store register. We’re also paying through the nose for all of these solar panel and wind turbine scams. 
In some places, there exists a conservative party bent on tightening government’s belt and letting people keep as much of their money as possible. Not in Raleigh, though.
In BergerWorld, the objective – as we’ve said before – is gaining bureaucratic power and finding a way to monetize said bureaucratic power. It’s all about keeping the peasants grateful and compliant.
Conservative are doubled over with joy at the work Elon and The Donald are perpetrating in DC. In Raleigh, we have an apparent uni-party that enjoys spending — and increasing said spending — way too much:
Both Democrats and Republicans in the North Carolina state House support raising the benefits paid out to unemployed workers by $100 a week.
The state now pays a maximum of $350 in unemployment benefits, if that is at least half of someone’s weekly pay before losing their job through no fault of their own.
A bill moving through committees in the House, which has a Republican majority, would raise that rate to $450 a week. The final amount in House Bill 48 was a rare win for Democrats, who are in a near-superminority in the General Assembly.
Democratic Rep. Deb Butler of New Hanover County offered an amendment to the bill to change the original proposed increase of $400 to $450.
The state’s unemployment insurance fund has a balance of $5 billion, a much different amount than the $1 billion it had after the 2009 recession, when North Carolina and other states had to be bailed out with federal loans. The fund now, which legislative researchers described as being held by the U.S. Treasury, is growing and could sustain a recession, according to the legislature’s Fiscal Research Division.[…]
First of all, there needs to be a big thank-you to Dale Folwell for keeping our state from going belly-up over all those federal loans. He was responsible for cleaning that mess up during the McCrory years.
Second, “funds” “held by the US Treasury” are pretty much Monopoly money. Has anybody seen these numbers lately?
Yep, that’s what we owe. And it’s more than the entire value of our economy. Right now, our government is operating on pure debt that could get called in at any time.
There’s nothing in this article that says this is a temporary measure. Of course, the spending gets attributed to “helping” Helene victims. (It looks awfully good to the voters when you are seen *helping* Helene victims.)
If you get out in the real world and talk to real people, you’ll find that this kind of spending rarely works as the politicians promise. A lot of money was thrown out there in the wake of the big COVID lockdown. Business owners professed to having a hard time getting people to come back to service jobs. Getting generous payments from the government for staying home looked a whole lot better to a lot of people than getting back out there and breaking a sweat.
Is there a deadline for cutting off this increase in spending? What will the procedure be to ensure this new money will go only to people who (1) live in an area hit by Helene and (2) lost their jobs thanks to the storm?
If businesses were shut down by the storm – and no one is getting paid – that is a substantial amount of unemployment insurance tax that was being paid but is not being paid anymore. Who is picking up the slack?
What effect does this legislation have on UI (unemployment insurance) taxes currently paid by workers and their employers? You would almost think they’d have to go up.
