Issue Position: Economy

Issue Position

North Carolina, along with many other states, is likely to experience the effects of a coming double dip recession. To address the impact of this on our North Carolina families and businesses, we must continue to address the decades of bloated government spending and resulting high taxation that has kept our state's business environment from reaching its full potential.

The new legislative majority did a good job of starting the process towards getting our economy back on track with regulatory reform, tax reduction and lawsuit reform. But much more needs to be done to create an atmosphere where businesses can grow to the point where more jobs are created. The most critical task facing legislators is to set priorities for use of available state funds to perform the basic role of state government in protecting and preserving the property of the citizens of the state.

There should be more scrutiny over state government functions to see where redundancies and waste occur and can be eliminated or combined with other useful functions. Competitive bidding contracts with strict performance criteria should be considered as alternatives for traditional state functions such as prison operations, management of state parks and recreational lands, ferry routes, mental health facilities, and public transit.

We need to limit the growth of government. The budget picture for each biennium should be developed within the parameters of a spending cap based on a combination of state population growth plus inflation.

We should change our approach to state debt and allow no more State debt obligations of any kind without voter approval.

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