All tagged republicans
No, I haven’t come up with the #ncpol equivalent of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In that famous science-fiction satire, the protagonist learns there is an “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” — and its answer is 42. But the question itself is never revealed, and indeed it’s suggested that if both the question and answer were known simultaneously, the universe would cease to exist.
Recently I heard a conversation between a talk show host and his guest. In discussing the present run-away inflation and the many failed policies of the present administration, the guest observed that, “I can’t think of anything positive about the Biden administration. It’s all going in the wrong direction. Even those who hate Trump must admit that at least we had a lot of good things going our way.”
Lenoir County was recently joined with Craven and Beaufort counties during the Senate Redistricting process. Previously, Lenoir and Wayne have been grouped together. When asked about the new county grouping for his senate district, Perry replied, “All Senate seats belong to the people, not individual lawmakers, regardless of county groupings. The people honored me when they chose me to serve and I hope they allow me the opportunity to return.”
Republicans in much of the country enjoyed significant success during the 2021 election cycle. They elected a GOP governor in Virginia, almost elected one in New Jersey, won several important judicial races in Pennsylvania, and even elected their first Republican candidate to local office in Seattle (city attorney) since the 1980s.
North Carolina’s state government has a multi-billion-dollar surplus. Its enormity has multiple causes: past spending discipline, revenue growth from a resurgent economy, and gobs of borrowed federal money. Its enormity also presents North Carolina’s conservative-run legislature with a challenge.
The gigantic effort in the U.S. Senate to end the Filibuster has failed. Republican Senators were unanimous in their pro-Filibuster stance, and they were joined by two Democrat Senators, Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema(Ariz). Also. Senator Angus King (I-ME) has said he will stand behind keeping the Filibuster.
Let’s zero in on Social Security. Its “trust fund,” which consists entirely of debt the federal government has issued to itself, will be exhausted in a decade or so. As a practical matter, this isn’t as big a deal as it sounds. Social Security is already running a cash deficit — more payments going out than payroll taxes coming in. To cover the difference, the federal government draws from its trust fund of federal bonds.
North Carolina House Majority Leader John Bell led a letter with sixty of his Republican colleagues in calling on Governor Roy Cooper to reinstate unemployment work search requirements.
As state lawmakers try to sort out when students can go back to school full time, members of the House are sponsoring a bill that would offer a voluntary summer school program for North Carolina students.
Due to GOP tax policy over the past decade, in other words, North Carolina’s state sales-tax burden went down, not up, by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Alas, some of this effect was offset by increases in county sales taxes. Who is responsible for those hikes? Democrats, overwhelmingly. Democratic politicians authorized those sales-tax referenda and Democratic voters were most likely to favor them.
