North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said Wednesday she’s confident she’ll have enough Democrats on her side before a final state budget gets to her desk although a handful of her House party members joined Republicans colleagues to support the GOP spending plan.
Perdue, speaking during a hastily arranged visit to a Raleigh high school, said she’s not concerned that five Democrats voted for the $19.3 billion House budget bill Tuesday night. The margin could give the GOP enough votes to withstand a potential veto by Perdue.
“They will be with me when the going gets tough,” Perdue said at Southeast Raleigh High School. “If we have to make hard decisions, I can take that to the bank.”
A final House vote on the spending plan was expected later Wednesday. Then the bill will go to the Senate, which will create its own budget version that’s likely to tinker with the balance of cuts between the universities and the public schools. The Senate’s GOP majority is already veto-proof as long as Republicans remain unified.
Perdue said she knew the House defections were going to happen but believed they won’t affect her ability to persuade Republicans to beef up the budget for public education. Democrats argue more than 20,000 jobs could be lost in the House budget. Republicans say that number is exaggerated.
“We’re not going to go backward on this,” Perdue said after talking with Southeast Raleigh students and an earth science teacher. “So I want to work with the General Assembly. I’m very hopeful that sooner or later … Republicans in the General Assembly will realize that we have to have resources in the public school system.”
The lynchpin of the House budget is the expiration of a pair of temporary tax increases — an extra penny on the sales tax and higher income tax bills for top wage earners. Republicans ran on doing away with the taxes during the fall campaign and will result in at least $1.3 billion in lost revenues.
“That budget and that tax increase is the reason that I’m here now,” said first-term Rep. Bill Cook, R-Beaufort. “I was sent here to bring some sanity to the budget process in Raleigh. I’m very proud of the budget that we’re about to pass.”
The plan spends $650 million less than Perdue proposed for the coming year in the public schools, the University of North Carolina system and community college system and 11 percent less than what was required to keep services running at current levels. Republicans argue the overall cut is less than half of that percentage when compared to projected annual spending this current fiscal year.
Rep. Jim Crawford, D-Granville, one of the five Democrats who voted for the budget Tuesday, said the GOP gave him no sweeteners in the spending plan to curry his vote.
“I’m trying to make things better for the people of our state,” Crawford said Wednesday. “I can do that a whole lot better on the inside than I can on the outside.”
Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said this week he expected the Senate version would spend less overall compared to the House bill when it comes to meeting spending targets set by Republicans leaders in both chambers in February.
The Senate also is likely to rework the level of reductions in the public schools and the UNC system, said Sen. Pete Brunstetter, D-Forsyth, a co-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He said UNC system cuts of more than 15 percent will probably be lower at the expense of the public schools, which saw a 9 percent decrease.
“We have thought that the balance in the reductions needs to be a little more level,” Brunstetter said.
However, Brunstetter said, the Democratic defections on the House side have caused Senate Republicans to reassess how they will form the budget in the next few weeks.
“Some of the dynamics from the last 24 hours — particularly with how the vote went over there — has us taking a step back and thinking about our strategy,” Brunstetter said.
By GARY D. ROBERTSON
May 4, 2011
