By Kirk Ross
Columnist
Way sneaky
This has been a hard stretch to follow, but as near as I can tell, state Senate leaders have cleverly cornered GOP legislators by putting together a budget that offers up a nice range of tax breaks for high earners and businesses while underfunding soft-hearted issues like health care for kids. Nearly every GOP senator took the bait, which proved so tempting that when the bill got back to the House there was a stampede of elephants crossing the aisle.
House Minority Leader Skip Stam said he thought it was probably the best deal the party could get and urged support, setting up one of the more interesting concurrence votes the legislature has seen, along with the prospect that for the first time a governor might veto a budget bill.
At press time, House Dems were promising to stand firm, setting up, well, the usual budget process, which involves a giant committee, quiet promises and lots of pizza and Char-Grill burgers.
GOP leaders, unaware that it was all a plot to get them on record actually voting for a budget for once, quickly touted their new 19 to 31 majority and noted that the budget is a sign of their party’s clout. Then they blamed Jim Black again.
At least something made sense.
Amscra
Linda Davies, fending off a challenge from Guilford County’s Marcus Kindley, was re-elected chair of the state GOP last weekend. She warned Democrats that they’re going to be looking over their shoulders to see a surging GOP gaining on ‘em.
While that’s a nice analogy, it implies that both parties are heading in the same direction. ’Course, maybe she’d been talking to Skip Stam.
Edwards slicing
If you caught any of the play-by-play from the New Hampshire debate, the big story line — at least for a while — was John Edwards calling out Sens. Clinton and Obama on Iraq and health care.
Whether it was intentional or not, the next day the Edwards campaign took a much sweeter tone via a fundraising message from new-strategy and ’nets dude Joe Trippi. The “birthday pie†fundraising letter featured a promise of a copy of mother Bobbie Edwards’ secret pecan pie recipe for anyone sending in at least $6.10 in honor of her son John’s birthday on June 10.
He turns 54.
Foxx Deluxe
Rep. Virginia Foxx topped a recent list of NC reps sending out mail via Congress’ franking privilege. According to the National Taxpayers Union study of spending in 2005, her more than one million pieces of mail cost taxpayers more than $200,000.
Of the N.C. delegation, Reps. Howard Coble and G.K. Butterfield didn’t send any mail, according to the study.
Ag-ony
The reauthorization of the federal farm bill is always one of the more anticipated events in still-heavily agricultural North Carolina. State budgets are nice and all, but this is a spring from which flows the really, really big money. It’s always a fight, and this year, boy-howdy, it is on. In the past couple of weeks, the Senate and House have unveiled vastly different versions of the bill. One big difference is over conservation. The Senate, partial of course to the conservation provisions authored by Ag chair Tom Harkin of Iowa, has put more money into paying farmers for conservation and sustainable agriculture projects. The House went the other way, cutting into the programs.
It is not so much a debate about conservation, though, as it is a debate over how to get money to farmers and which farmers get the support. Some see shifting more money to conservation as a threat to the current system of price supports. Throw into the mix rulings that some of said price supports violate international trade law and ongoing negotiations — including heavy involvement by the French — and you’ve got a difficult-to-fathom mess.
Oh, and ethanol. (There, now I’ve mentioned it.)