FORBES: With North Carolina’s Economic Success, Governor Pat McCrory Has A Great Story To Tell

As this week’s story in FORBES notes, North Carolina’s continued economic success gives Governor Pat McCrory a great story to tell during his re-election campaign. Under Governor McCrory, North Carolina is now one of the top states in the country to do business, adding over 275,000 jobs, implementing historic tax cuts, reporting a budget surplus and driving the Carolina Comeback.

Governor Pat McCrory & North Carolina Republicans Have a Great Story to Tell
Forbes; 4/27/2016

Regardless of one’s opinion on HB 2, it cannot overshadow or remotely counteract what North Carolina has done legislatively over the last five years to become one of the most attractive places in the country to do business, invest, live, raise a family, and retire. Since Republicans took control of the state legislature for the first time in over a century in 2010, North Carolina legislators and Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who was elected in 2012, have enacted a collection of policy reforms that is more impressive from a free market and limited government standpoint than what any other state accomplished during that time, with the arguable exception of Wisconsin.

First there is North Carolina’s historic tax reform act of 2013, which relieved the state of the dubious distinction of having the highest personal and corporate income tax rates in the Southeast. Aside from Florida & Tennessee, which do not tax income, North Carolina now has the lowest personal and corporate income tax rates in the region as the result of the tax changes signed into law by Gov. McCrory. Thanks to the tax relief enacted in 2013, individuals, families, and employers across the state get to keep more of their hard-earned income. Going into 2013, North Carolina had the 44th ranked business tax climate in the country on the non-partisan Tax Foundation’s business tax climate index. Thanks to the 2013 tax reform act, North Carolina went from only beating six states, to having the 16th best business tax climate in the nation.

Despite the doom and gloom Democratic legislators and progressive activists predicted about the 2013 tax cuts, North Carolina has realized budget surpluses for the last two years, which permitted further income tax relief in 2015 bringing the income rate down to 5.499 percent. If revenue targets continue to be met, the state corporate income tax rate will drop from 4.0 to 3.0 percent in 2017. Even Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), former chair of the DNC and one of the most partisan politicians in America, has proposed cutting his state’s corporate income tax in response to what North Carolina has done. Imitation is the best form of flattery, the saying goes.

The fact is that despite the hyperbolic rhetoric coming from Democratic politicians and progressive groups, the numbers make clear that North Carolina has performed well under GOP control based on the key metrics of economic health.

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Republican legislators have expressed their intention to use the 2016 regular session, which convened this week, to provide further tax relief by increasing the standard deduction. Such a tax cut would provide the most benefit to low and middle-income households. One would think North Carolina Democrats would be interested in such a proposal to provide tax relief to North Carolinians who can use it the most. Instead, they have used recent weeks to recycle tired attacks on the tax changes enacted in recent years, such as the claim that they were just a giveaway to the rich. This critique is inaccurate, misleads the public, and is belied by government numbers, which document the fact that Gov. McCrory and Republican legislators have cut taxes by more than $5 billion on net, and every income group saw an average net tax cut.

In addition to implementing significant income tax rate reduction, Gov. McCrory, Senate President Phil Berger (R), and Speaker Tim Moore (R) have implemented regulatory reform every year since 2011. On top of that, North Carolina lawmakers passed unemployment insurance reform that retired a more than $2 billion debt to the federal government. Gov. McCrory and Republican lawmakers have also won national praise for passing legislation to offer scholarship grants to parents from low income households and those who have children with disabilities so that they can provide a better education for their children.

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Read the full story online here.