“The lottery was sold to the public as extra money for education, but Republican legislators have cut the base funding and supplanted the revenue from the lottery, so the net hasn’t been positive for education,” he said. “And that base funding has been given away in tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and corporations in North Carolina.”
Queen said Republican legislators have been deceptive in saying that education spending has increased over the last few years while the party has been in the majority in Raleigh.
“They’ve been cutting education for the last two years and backfilled it with lottery money,” he said. “And they haven’t even restored the funding cuts that were necessary during the recession.”
During the recession, North Carolina benefitted from more than $15 million in federal stimulus money. Nearly $3 million of that went to the Department of Public Instruction, but after that money dried up and the state budget began to recover, the education budget never did.
“They like to say state funding has continued to grow for education, but that’s only true if you ignore the revenue sharing during the recession,” Queen said.
Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, was out of the country and couldn’t be reached for comment on the issue, but he has defended the Republican-led legislature’s education spending numerous times in the last several years. While education funding reached a low of $7 billion in 2010 under Democrat leadership, Davis boasts that the Republican leadership has increased the education budget every year since 2011. Last year’s education budget reached up to $8.1 billion.
“The state spending has increased significantly since the Republicans assumed leadership of the General Assembly,” Davis states on his website for re-election. “Federal stimulus money that the Democrats used to pad the education budget ran out, but Republicans added over $1 billion in state spending afterwards.”
Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk