U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (NC-05)  voted to eliminate taxpayer funding for the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.  The bill, H.R. 359, passed the House 239-160.  It came up for a vote under House Republicans’ YouCut program, which allows any American to weigh in on where to cut the federal budget.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, H.R. 359 reduces federal spending by $617 million over the next ten years.

“Bankrolling presidential campaigns during an era of record budget deficits is not a good use of taxpayer dollars,” Foxx said. “Today the Congressional Budget Office projected a massive $1.5 trillion federal budget deficit.  In light of this, we’ve got to look everywhere we can in the budget for savings and the elimination of subsidized presidential electioneering is a common sense step.”

Foxx is an original cosponsor of H.R. 359, which completely eliminates taxpayer funding for the “Presidential Election Campaign Fund.”  This fund is used to finance presidential election campaigns and party conventions.  Any money remaining in the account would be transferred to the general fund of the Treasury Department.

House Republicans highlighted this bill in their YouCut program this week.  The web-based YouCut initiative allows concerned Americans to cast their vote for various budget-cutting options and this week H.R. 359 was the top vote getter.  For more information on the YouCut program and this week’s proposed budget cuts please visithttp://www.majorityleader.gov/YouCut/.

Visit Representative Foxx’s Website

Other North Carolina Representatives who voted on this bill was:

NC1- Rep. Butterfield (nay)
NC2- Rep. Ellmers (yea)
NC3- Rep. Jones (nay)
NC4- Rep. Price (nay)
NC5- Rep. Foxx (yea)
NC6- Rep. Coble (yea)
NC7- Rep. McIntyre (nay)
NC8- Rep. Kissell (nay)
NC9- Rep. Myrick (yea)
NC10- Rep. McHenry (yea)
NC11- Rep. Shuler (yea)
NC12- Rep. Watt (nay)
NC13- Rep. Miller (nay)

It’s here! We are one step closer to having more educational freedom in North Carolina. State Senator Richard Stevens from Wake county introduced a bill this week to remove the cap on charter schools in North Carolina.

What is a Charter School?
Charter schools provide parents a choice in the education of their children — and it is a public choice. Public tax dollars are the primary funding sources for charter schools. Local, state, and federal dollars follow the child to a charter school. The schools have open enrollment with no discrimination, no religious associations, and no tuition.

How much does it cost to attend a Charter School?
Charter Schools are tuition free. They are public schools and funding for the schools come from federal, state, and local taxes.

What are the requirements for acceptance into a charter school?
The only requirement to get into a charter school is the availability at the school in the requested grade. (from the Office of Charter Schools)

Currently, we have one hundred charter schools, mandated by current law. I, personally asked my Representatives locally why there was a cap, and the answer was that Democrats in control of the general assembly were not willing to co sponsor the legislation needed to lift the cap. With 100 counties in North Carolina, that would break down to one per county, but that is not true. Forsyth County has approximately five, Mecklenburg County has at least five, Wake County has at least ten- so minimally these three counties alone have over 17 additional schools, taking away from other counties. (Why would Democrats want to deter educational success?) Lifting the cap gives North Carolina the opportunity to have charter schools in all counties.

Eddie Goodall, president of N.C. Alliance for Public Charter Schools, agreed that there should be more accountability, and he added that it should be measured by improvement in school performance in a given year.

“The cap is one of the main problems for our state, but there are many more things we want to do. We want an independent charter school commission to oversee charter schools to make sure we have effective and quality charter schools,” he said.

“The only kind of cap there should be is a quality cap.” *

Read the bill for yourself. I believe this is a good start for our new general assembly. Ideally, I would also like to see tax credits or a well written voucher program- what are your thoughts?

– Wendy
Find me on Facebook and Twitter

Be sure to send Senator Stevens an email- Richard.Stevens@ncleg.net thanking him for introducing this bill!

The Co Sponsors are:
Austin M. Allran (Catawba, Iredell);
Tom Apodaca (Buncombe, Henderson, Polk);
Stan Bingham (Davidson, Guilford);
Peter S. Brunstetter (Forsyth);
Thom Goolsby (New Hanover);
Malcolm Graham (Mecklenburg); <– the one democrat!
Rick Gunn (Alamance, Caswell);
Ralph Hise (Avery, Haywood, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Yancey);
Neal Hunt (Wake);
Wesley Meredith (Bladen, Cumberland);
E. S. (Buck) Newton (Nash, Wilson);
Louis Pate (Greene, Pitt, Wayne);
David Rouzer (Johnston, Wayne);
Dan Soucek (Alexander, Ashe, Watauga, Wilkes);
Jerry W. Tillman (Montgomery, Randolph);
Tommy Tucker (Mecklenburg, Union)

NC House Representative George Cleveland (District 14, Onslow County) introduced a bill Thursday that would prohibit illegal aliens from attending North Carolina’s community college and universities. (This bill is on the calendar Monday, January 31.) You might remember the state community colleges board voting last year to admit illegal immigrants to classrooms if they graduated from a U.S. high school, pay out-of-state tuition and did not displace a citizen. This bill would reverse that.  Read the entire bill for yourself. All one and almost-a- half pages of it.

So there’s a large debate surrounding this topic. Opponents of this bill would say it’s not fair for students who had no say so in to their legal status because it is their parents who made the decision to emigrate here illegally and put them in our school system. What do you believe is the best way to solve that issue?

——————————————————-

– Wendy
Find me on Facebook and Twitter

Be sure to shoot Representative Cleveland an email thanking him for introducing this bill at George.Cleveland@ncleg.net!

Co Sponsors of this bill are: L. Brown;  Current;  Frye;  Guice;  Hager;  Iler;  Ingle;  Jones; Jordan;  Langdon;  McGee;

Sanderson;  Torbett;

Presumptive Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger also spoke with reporters last week (see Thom Tillis interview). As well as social issues and the budgeting process, he also commented on taxes:

“Increases in taxes are not something that we are going to have as part of what we deal with in the budget. Continuation of the so-called ‘temporary taxes’ is not something that will be part of our proposal. I’ve said it this way: We intend to keep the promise the Democrats made two years ago when they said that they were temporary taxes.”

Redistricting:

“One of the goals that we have is to draw maps that comply with the law, that will be approved under the Voting Rights Act, and that will be in place so that the state of North Carolina can conduct elections under the maps, drawn by the people who were elected by the voters in the recent election, in time that we don’t have to delay next year’s elections.”

and the UNC School System:

“It’s hard for me to say whether or not you’ll see going forward a perception amongst people outside as to whether or not the universities are getting a better deal or the K-12 education system is getting a better deal or community colleges are getting a better deal. It seems to me that we have an obligation to make sure that all three of those legs are properly funded and perform the function for which the people of North Carolina expect those institutions to exist.”

(read the full article)

RALEIGH — Newly elected Republican House Speaker Thom Tillis of Cornelius sat down with Carolina Journal reporters on Tuesday for a wide-ranging interview on the 2011-2012 legislative session. Excerpts from the interview are below:

On cooperation between the House and Senate on budgeting:

On when the session will wrap up:

On how the first week will pan out legislatively:

On legalizing video poker and having the government run it:

On eliminating the charter school cap:

On reducing the number of government-run boards and commissions:

On addressing underfunding of the state pension system:

On abortion-related bills:

On a marriage amendment:

• On cooperation between the House and Senate on budgeting: “We are inviting the Senate to be actively engaged in all of our deliberations. We think that by doing that we can minimize the amount of time that will be required once the Senate ultimately gets [the budget], and virtually eliminate the need for conference.”

• On when the session will wrap up:
“I was told as a speaker you need to be careful and not stake yourself out. There are a lot of things I’m going to stake myself out on, and one of them is that we need to get out of here sooner. We’re starting a month earlier than we normally have, so as far as I’m concerned we’ve gained a month just by organizing as quickly and starting … We want to get done and get out of here.”

• On how the first week will pan out legislatively: “We have a 100-day agenda. We intend to fulfill the promises that were made in that 100-day agenda. Now, whether that is legislation that is filed and moved over the next two weeks, or begins to move in the 90th day of that agenda, with the goal of getting it introduced and moved, we’ll work that out as our legislative agenda takes shape, as we get a real understanding for what we need to do with the budget, what we need to do with redistricting, the capacity that we have to move the other bills and in what sequence. We’ve had people come out there and say, ‘You ran on jobs and the economy and redistricting, and now you’re going and talking about another agenda item.’ Although I want to be lean, the expectation that we would only pass two bills this cycle is probably not right. We will pass several hundred bills, and there will be far fewer introduced than in past sessions.”

• On legalizing video poker and having the government run it: “We’ve got to take a look at it. We have a number of members in our caucus that are uncomfortable with it. We have a fair number of members who think that this is at least on the fringe of the whole idea of limited government and free market principles. So we’re going to have to have those very valid arguments weighed in the caucus and then in the committee process.”

• On eliminating the charter school cap: “We will send a very clear message that we believe public charter schools are an important part of the options we provide families to get our kids educated, and to be in combination with continuing to make progress on our traditional public schools.”

• On reducing the number of government-run boards and commissions: “I think that it is wise to reduce the number of boards and commissions, and it is intuitively obvious that we have too many of them. We’ve just grown. Some of them have a difficult time getting members, I understand … I haven’t seen the governor’s proposal. We applaud her for the thought process. But if we see boards and commissions that are more likely to promote free enterprise, business-friendly policy, we’ll have to take a look at that, because we may see that there are suggested for elimination that may have a real value.”

• On addressing underfunding of the state pension system: “It’s part of our overall fiscal strategy. It is just bad management to leave that out there and to not fund it. The other question is, long term, how do we manage those decisions? To what extent do we have to look at alternatives to the current pension system? We’ll have people look at that.”

• On abortion-related bills: “We have members in our caucus who have very strong feelings about those bills. We’re going to look at them and give them serious consideration. Again, it all has to be in balance … Those sorts of bills that we believe, first, will be of value to the expectant mother, and may also save a few lives, I don’t think that’s limiting abortion. We can’t, by law, limit abortions. What we can do is provide expectant mothers additional information that may cause them to exercise a choice that is beyond the only choice some people want or expect a mother to have.”

• On a marriage amendment: “The marriage amendment is something else we’re looking at. We’re conferring with the Senate. It will be a product of our caucus, and I have encouraged all of our members to sit down and talk about our legislative agenda, make recommendations. You’ll see those recommendations come out over the next several weeks.”

David N. Bass is an associate editor of Carolina Journal. Find him on Twitter and Facebook.
Article originally posted January 28, 2011 on Carolina Journal.

Connect with House Speaker Tillis on Facebook, and Twitter

NC TEA Party takes no credit whatsoever for the writing of this article.