Tuesday, Oct. 10,2017 — Sen. Thom Tillis’ «analysis» in the Wall Street Journal was big on sweeping declarations and short on specifics. Who can blame him for painting over the details of reality with the broad brush of generalizations?<\/b>
\nCBC Editorial: Tuesday, Oct. 10,2017; Editorial # 8221 The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company
Sen. Thom Tillis so desperately wants to make North Carolina a red state he\u2019s taken to wearing rose-tinted glasses.
Tillis, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, discusses tax cuts he helped ram through the General Assembly while he served as House speaker.
Readers perusing the piece could be forgiven if they came away thinking the former state House speaker had paved the streets with gold, made public school teachers\u2019 supply closets overflow with resources, given state workers big raises, ended waiting lines at the DMV, slashed costs for university students and made sure everyone had easy and affordable access to health care.
While Tillis claimed he held off hordes of special interest lobbyists seeking special tax breaks in his so-called tax reforms, the truth is he worked hand-in-hand with the business lobbyists to deliver a huge corporate tax cut that hasn\u2019t stimulated the economy, nor led to further investment.
The Tillis \u201canalysis\u201d was big on sweeping declarations and short on specifics. Who can blame him for looking to paint over the details of reality with the broad brush of generalizations?
Let\u2019s add a few facts to the senator\u2019s grandiose conclusions and provide the kind of reality check that middle class North Carolinians know all too well.
EMPLOYMENT
\u201cMore than 350,000 jobs have been created, and the unemployment rate has been cut nearly in half,\u201d says Tillis. Well, how many jobs were lost over that time? How many frustrated workers just gave up and left the workforce?
When comparing North Carolina\u2019s pre-recession employment numbers with the numbers today, there\u2019s a clearer picture: Employment growth hasn\u2019t come close to keeping up with the state\u2019s population growth.
North Carolina\u2019s population has increased 11 percent over the last decade but the size of the prime-age workforce (ages 25-54) increased just 8 percent \u2013 suggesting that some people who should be in the workforce have dropped out, including many still in their prime who lost jobs in the recession and eventually gave up trying to find something else. And that\u2019s not to mention the number of people who have been forced to take jobs at lower rates of pay or fewer hours than they desired.
That is slightly better than treading water, in our book.
Of great concern should be the sectors where we\u2019ve lost jobs. Compared to 2007, North Carolina has 53,000 fewer construction jobs (a 21 percent drop) and 70,000 fewer manufacturing jobs (down 13 percent). Much of the growth, meanwhile, has come in sectors characterized by low wages, few benefits and more precarious job security.
HOUSEHOLD INCOME
Since the recession, most North Carolina households have found it tougher to make ends meet. Median household income in North Carolina has been losing ground to inflation over the last decade. The median income of $46,193 a decade ago would be $54,964 today when adjusted for inflation. Given the latest household median income of $50,584, families are bringing in $4,376 less per year. Think of it as an 8 percent pay cut.
The current poverty rate for the state, 16.4 percent, is HIGHER than it was in 2007 \u2013 at 14.3 percent. That\u2019s no comeback \u2013 it\u2019s heading backwards.
What\u2019s really going on with those Thom Tillis tax cuts?
STATE REVENUES
What Tillis calls tax reform has really been a massive shift in who pays the cost of government and how they do it. In simple terms, the Tillis plan cut taxes on corporations and raised sales and use taxes on everyone else. In the last decade, sales tax collections have increased 40 percent while corporate income taxes have DROPPED 48 percent. The burden of paying the costs of government is being moved onto lower income taxpayers from higher income ones.
Tillis used overly broad strokes to paint his rosy and unrealistic picture of a \u201ctransformed\u201d North Carolina. But when you take a closer look at the numbers that show the state\u2019s economic performance, a different picture emerges.
Faith in trickle-down economics has left Tillis all wet and his rank-and-file constituents\u2019 hopes for economic improvement high and dry.
While Tillis and his fellow leaders in the General Assembly have been busy taking care of the state\u2019s comfortable big corporations \u2013 show horses \u2013 the middle and working class households of the state are left in their dust.<\/p>\n

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