Sunday, June 12, 2011

Email for the NC Democrats

Friends,

The state budget that arrived on Bev Perdue's desk last week is a collection of historic cuts to public schools, health care services, law enforcement personnel, emergency management programs and environmental protections.  

This afternoon, the Governor sent it back to the misguided Republican legislators with her veto.

Read Governor Perdue's veto message. Click here to see the video.

What sounds like a typical political grudge match between Republicans and Democrats really isn't. Republicans claim there is no difference between their budget and the Governor's. But there is. The GOP budget provides half a billion dollars less for education over the next two years.  

Ask any of your neighbors, Republicans or Independents, if they think fewer teachers and larger class sizes are the way to improve our schools? Ask them at what point should we start firing police officers?  Chances are your neighbors see North Carolina much the way you and I do:  North Carolina is a great place worth defending. It is a growing state worth investing in.  It is a state whose citizens believe our public education system is worth a penny.

The Republican leadership has no practical experience with the responsibilities of governing. Historically, their role has been to parrot the sort of radical economic ideologies in vogue at the time; from depression era "do-nothingness" to Reagan-era "trickle-down economics", with little actual impact on the explosive growth of a state that was two generations ago mainly rural farmland and factory towns.  

For the first time in over a century, the Republicans have been in complete control of the budget writing process. 

Budgets are statements of political thought and an instrument used to set forth our most important priorities. Gone from this Republican budget are considerations for the children of families struggling to enter the middle class. Erased is every lesson we have learned about compassion for people suffering from mental illness. Vanished is everything we know works in early childhood education, the conservation of clean air and water, or the reserves we maintain in the event of natural disasters.

The Governor has vetoed this budget because the suffering it causes is entirely unnecessary.  This Republican budget takes us to the absolute bottom of every state in the country in per student funding. The Governor has fought hard to preserve all of these things through the continuation of a three quarters of a cent sales tax we're already paying.  But that price-- the price of living in a modern, educated, competitive, fair state-- was apparently too high for the handful of elected ideologues who wrote the budget for the first time.  They seem to prefer to take their chances that we can scramble back from the bottom of the heap and put the pieces back together again in another generation or two.

North Carolina can’t fail our children and her future.  Call your legislators and urge them to sustain the Governor’s veto.  You can reach the main legislative switchboard at (919) 733-7928 or click here to find your legislator.

David Parker

Chair

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