Budgetary bloodletting on the campaign trail

The fiscal conservative mantra this year especially, when the state of North Carolina faces a budget shortfall of $3 billion to $4 billion, is that government needs to focus on essential services and cut wasteful spending. A state budget is like a household budget, Republican NC Senate candidate Jeff Hyde, told a group of students at GTCC in Jamestown today: When less money is coming in, you tighten the belt and figure out your priorities.

“We don’t want to cut programs that North Carolina wants to spend money on, which is generally schools, roads and some other things,” Hyde said. “I’m sure that in the great benevolent state that we live in that our elderly are going to be taken care of.”

In a state with 9.4 million people, one person’s essential service may be another person’s wasteful spending. A 50-year-old student who said she suffers from spinal arthritis told Hyde cuts to home healthcare for the elderly, disabled and sick are underway. She said her mother has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and currently relies on someone paid by the state to come in and dust her home regularly. She asked Hyde for his position on whether that service should be cut.

“There are plenty of things if we want to continue on the path where we’re going that if government could become more involved in each of our lives — when I said earlier that we have a choice — do we want government to continue to grow, be more intrusive in our lives or do we want to say, ‘No, it’s big enough, or it needs to get smaller and let’s put a stop to that’?” Hyde said. “In your specific case, I’m sure that the community that you live in — if the government were to cut whatever that program is, I’m sure that the community that you live in, there are benevolent hearts that would come in and help you — churches and civic organizations that would help you. We live in a great, benevolent society. America is the most charitable country history has ever known. The state of North Carolina is in the top ten in benevolence by private citizens. To think that we need government to solve the dusting of your house I think is wrong.”

Hyde then asked for a show of hands for people who would volunteer to come dust the woman’s house. About a third of the hands in the auditorium went up.

“Give me your phone number, and I’ll make sure your house is dusted, if I have to do it myself,” Hyde said.