House Speaker Thom Tillis has responded to last week’s Democratic leaders’ tour of North Carolina in which they were critical of Republicans for allowing a sales tax increase they imposed two years earlier to expire while cutting state programs at the same time.
Tillis, a Mecklenburg County Republican, said that the Democrats were begging to raise taxes.
House Democratic Leader Joe Hackney of Orange County along with a number of other House Democrats – including fellow Orange County Rep. Bill Faison – traveled the state last week lamenting the effect of budget cuts adopted during the 2011 session of the General Assembly.
Click here to read a Charlotte Observer story on the tour, which they dubbed the NC Forward tour.
“With a stagnant economy and an approach that’s never worked before, you have to admire the audacity of the Hackney/Faison bus tour to bet our state’s taxpayers for more of their hard-earned money – while our taxpayers are hurting the most,” Tillis said.
Tillis said that raising sales taxes would turn “a blind eye to the taxpayers,” adding that it would also hurt businesses trying to balance their budgets.
“Fortunately for North Carolinians, their failed approach of higher and higher taxes, for more and more government spending, doesn’t reflect the overwhelming, bipartisan majority of the House that passed a budget restoring over a billion dollars to N.C. taxpayers,” Tillis said.
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