North Carolina lawmakers are beginning to understand exactly what the state’s progressives are looking to accomplish with their weekly “Moral Monday” protests at the Capitol, and it’s insanely expensive.
Forbes contributor Patrick Gleason reports that North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger sent a letter to progressive leaders this spring to get a better idea of the associated costs of the actual policy changes sought by the state’s far left leaders.
What soon became apparent is the Moral Monday crowd’s list of demands – which includes permitting collective bargaining for all government employees, expanding Medicaid, state subsidized child care for all, state provided health insurance for all and other measures – would entail an astronomical tax increase the state definitely cannot afford, according to Gleason.
“The non-partisan fiscal staff found that the Moral Monday agenda, if implemented, would require state lawmakers to raise taxes by $7 billion. For some context, such a tax hike would increase the North Carolina general fund by a whopping 35 percent,” Gleason wrote.
Most of the money would have to come from a massive increase in taxes on corporations, which have been driving the state’s economic recovery in recent years, making the plan promoted by North Carolina NAACP President Rev. William Barber and other progressives not only unrealistic, but financially reckless.
“The Moral Monday plan would also necessitate a nearly ten-fold increase in the state corporate income tax, taking the rate from 6 to over 50 percent. Combined with the federal income tax, the highest in the world, if Rev. Barber and crew had their druthers, companies would face a combined tax rate of over 80 percent on profits earned in North Carolina,” Gleason reports.
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