Democrats oppose cap on NC income tax because they'd like to raise taxes in the future | Hour 1

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All right, so a bunch of stuff happened in Raleigh, a bunch of bills that got past, a couple of overridden Vito, well one overridden Vito, I believe, And we now have a bit of a clearer picture maybe on how Carla Cunningham and Nasife Majid, the two Mecklemburg County representatives, both Democrats, well formerly Democrats, who were targeted by their own parties leadership for defeat and so then they became unaffiliated, and everybody was wondering, one of what they're going to do when they return for the remainder of the legislative session before their replacements are sworn in in December, people were wondering, are they going to caucus with the Democrats. Are they going to caucus with Republicans? Are they going to vote with Republicans to help pass these bills that have to overcome the two thirds majority vote, the super majority, because over in the Senate they don't need any Democrat votes. The Republicans have a super majority over there, but in the House their one votes shy, so they've always had to try to peel away one Democrat. And in fact, that's what got Cunningham and Majed in trouble with their own party was because they would vote with the Democrats to override the goodernatorial vetos. Carla Cunningham voted against or voted to override on the requirement that the sheriffs cooperate with Ice, and Majid voted with the Republicans to override a good natorial veto on if I remember correctly, it was the it was the no transgender surgeries for minors. So like really radical positions here, right, and so for that they had to go because the Democrat Party in its current form is a radical Marxist party, and so you have to go. And we now have a bit of a clearer picture. Cunningham and Majid both voted with Republicans in order to get a couple of measures through the House, so they were the deciding votes. And what I'm wondering now is the more often they do this, does that then open them up for more of the kinds of attacks that they were subjected to, which then prompted their defeat. Right, Carla Cunningham talked about all the threats she was getting from the left, not from the right. She was getting them from her fellow Democrats and leftists, and it made her mad. I wonder if you guys are doing the same thing. You're giving her the Tricia Cotham treatment. You're gonna key her car right, That's what you did to Cougham. So like you're gonna if you're gonna go down that path and you're gonna treat these two lawmakers the way you treated Cougham. I like the Republican chances of getting even more stuff through. I really do. People keep asking me, what about constitutional Carrie Pete, what about constitutional carry? This is a It's a measure that would basically. Make the concealed carry permit process well. Not voluntary, but uh and not irrelevant. It would still exist, but it would be a discretionary, Like you wouldn't need to get a concealed carry permit in order to conceal carry. Right, it just constitutional carry. And just remember the state I think already did away with the pistol purchase permits issued through the sheriffs. I have a concealed carry permit, so I don't ever have to go through the sheriff's office to get a pistol purchase permit. But I feel like I kind of remember them doing away with that prior. But anyway, the constitutional carry bill passed the House and Senate got vetoed, and so now it's waiting on one more vote in the House. People keep asking about it, and it's like, unless you can convince one Democrat or to former Democrats now one affiliate, it's unless you can convince one of them to join in with the Republicans. Like my expectation is that it does not it does not get overridden. But I don't know how mad do you want to make Cunningham and Magee. And if you make them mad enough, do they just say, you know what, screwed, we hate you more than we hate Republicans. We're going to vote with them on this stuff. I don't know, but they did a couple of things first well, and this is where I've got all the audio. So the first thing is a constitutional amendment that would cap the state income tax at three point five percent. Okay, for background, the North Carolina state constitution already has a cap in place. The original constitutional cap was seven percent. It was there for decades, then it got raised to ten percent under Democrats. Okay, then what was it seven years. Ago, twenty eighteen I believe may have been when they reduced it back down to seven percent and Democrats screamed, bloody murder, how dare you? What if we need the extra revenue for the children? What if there's a disaster, what if? What if? What if? Right? And what their argument boiled down to, and by the way, boils down to this very day, is we want to raise taxes. That's what the argument is. Now they don't want to say that. They dress it up in all of these euphemisms like legislative or fiscal flexibility. We don't want to handcuff future legislatures, which it would not if a legislature in the future was like, oh my gosh, we really need to raise it above three and a half percent or the current seven percent, we really need to raise it above seven per Well, then you could ask the public whether or not to change the constitution once again, make your case. Oh that's so hard. People don't like to pay income taxes. Mm hmm, yeah, which is why Republicans are going to ask people, do you want to pay a seven percent income tax or three and a half percent income tax? Not that we're paying that now. And that was another argument Democrats were making, was that this actually isn't going to cut anyone's taxes. Yeah, because the tax rate is already set to go to three point four to nine percent, so just under the three and a half percent. Like next year. That's when that's going into effect, because that was the law that the Republicans passed. It's part of all their reforms. But Democrats are hoping one day in the future they shall reclaim the majority in the House and Senate and the governor's mansion. They will have the trifecta at some point, and when they have that trifecta, they're going to raise taxes and they do not want to be constrained by a three point five percent cap. They could basically live with the seven percent, and they'll probably gobble up all of that. Right if they ever get back in power, they would go they would have a lot more room to work with to raise all of the income taxes and to adopt some sort of a marginal rate. We do not have a marginal rate in North Carolina. We have a flat tax, a flat income tax. Right now it's at I think it's like three point nine or three point eight three, something like that, and it's set to go down to three point four to nine, which would be under the cap if if voters approve this. So this is one of the constitutional amendments that the Republicans are wanting to put on the ballot in order to get the public's approval to put the cap at three point five percent. Currently it's at seven. They want to put the cap at three point five. We'll listen to the arguments that the Democrats make in order to reserve the right to raise your taxes. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven in mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal dinners, wedding, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. Senate Bill ten eighty came up for debate in the state Senate. This would reduce the seven percent income tax cap down to three and a half percent codified in the state constitution. So in the future, if any legislature wants to raise income taxes, they would have to first get referendum. Get a referendum, pass get voter approval to amend the Constitution again to raise that number. And they know that's going to be a hard lift, and that's why they're opposing it, because they want to raise taxes. That's the only reason that you would want that fiscal flexibility, as one of them referred to it, as, you want that flexibility in order to raise taxes. Right, But they don't want to have to say that. So if they can just avoid having to say all of that, that would be fantastic, thanks so much. In fact, hang on a second, let me see if I can find this clip. It is from Yeah, here it is. This was in the House during the House debate. It was about another bill that would put a levy limit. I'll get to this on property tax increases. It would cap the property tax increases at the local level. And here's Robert Reeves arguing against this. Do you really honestly want to tell me that you think? And I don't know who sent letters to any of you guys. I have never received a letter or heard one county commissioner, Republican or Democrats say to me, man, you know what I'm looking forward to when I get in office. I want to raise some taxes. Who does that? Nobody? Nobody does that. That's the problem is that Democrats will campaign for programs and services, promising all of these things to all of the people that will vote for them, right, and then they say, oh, we don't have money, so we have to raise taxes. Nobody runs on a platform of raising your taxes. I think the last person to do that was. Was it Mondale? I think it was Mondale and he lost forty nine states as president as a candidate. Right, nobody runs on a increased taxes platform. No, they run on free stuff like zoron Mamdani, free buses, government run grocery stores where you'll have access to all of this food for peanuts on the or pennies on the dollar. Oh, by the way, now we have a twelve billion dollar budget gap. Oh so now we're going to have to raise taxes. Oh, let's get the rich. And this was also the message that North Carolina Democrat lawmakers were making as well. They were arguing for this very thing. So let me start with the Senate Majority leader, Michael Lee. He's a Republican from New Hanover, and he said, hey, Democrats, like this actually would help advance your big campaign messaging really of affordability. Right the citizens of North Carolina right now are struggling with higher gas prices, higher food prices, and our tax rate right now is three point nine nine percent and a schedule to go down to three point four nine percent in January. This tax cap is at three and a half percent, and we've made a commitment to the odors, to the citizens of North Carolina to reduce the tax burden on them, and this is one way that we can. Do it is to put it to them. It's not us making that decision, although I do think it'll be a ratification of what we've been doing for over a decade now and fulfilling the promise of bringing that tax rate lower to help in some small way citizens of North Carolina be able to meet their needs and obligations in their own households. Yeah, so you guys are out here campaigning on affordability. They're talking about gas prices. Well, do you know how much taxes are in a gallon of gas? Like that's why California's gas prices are so high compared to every other state. If those are all state taxes. The state puts gas taxes on every gallon you buy and they use it to fund road projects and all sorts of stuff. But no, no, no, it's about the Iran war. It's not about the taxes we've imposed. So when Democrats do it, it's different. Always right, the tax is the and you could argue that the gas tax is one of the most regressive types of taxes because not only is it a sales tax, right, which Democrats are saying is regressive, and they would always argue against the sales tax. When the Republicans came into power, and one of the first things they did in their tax reform package was to start applying sales taxes to industries that basically had lobbying power when the Democrats were in charge, and so they got carve outs. And so when Republicans came in, they were like, no, everybody's going to pay the sales tax. And then all of a sudden, it was like, oh my gosh, this is the most regressive thing ever. Meanwhile, like Republicans reduced that sales tax overall. They sun seted a quote temporary sales tax that Democrats put in place but then didn't sunset. So Republicans came in their. Life that sunsetting, because that's what was promised to the people. So that's going to get sunseted. And so that went away, and then we're going to apply the sales tax across the board, right, and Democrats raised holy cane over it, saying it's regressive. But don't you touch that gas tax, which impacts the working poor the most, especially like you know, driving to and from work, they're burning gas. That's a very regressive tax on them. But you don't hear them talking about reducing the gas tax. You don't hear that, that's no argument. You just hear them talk about affordability, because everybody wants things to be more affordable. And you know what, the leading driver of affordability or in affordability is government spending, taxes and regulation. That's what does it. It all falls under that. All the inflation that's monetary policy, right, the regulatory burdens that drive up the cost of the consumer, all of that. But they don't talk about that. All they talk. About is the ability and the flexibility to raise taxes in the future. But not on you, my constituents, on those rich, evil people over on the text line. Hang on, all right, Pete great name says isn't it common knowledge that, oh no, sorry, this is seven oh four number. Isn't it common knowledge that a Democrat will never cut a social program and will never cut taxes and is likely to raise them, Yet voters still vote them in and voter are voters just insane? No, they think they are. They think they're going to get something. That's why they promise all of this stuff. Right, Conservatives promise you basically nothing, which is amazing they ever win. You know, vote for me, I'm not going to give you anything from the public trough, right. Instead, it's you keep more of your own money. That's essentially the different worldviews, right, And people vote for candidates that promise them free stuff. They don't think they're going to pay for it, so that's why they vote for it. Pete says fiscal flexibility. Lol, that's a good one. I have not heard that one yet. I am for the text cap to be set at three point five percent. Thanks for sharing what you do with the community, love listening and learning. Thank you, Pete, appreciate that. John says, what do they mean? We don't want to handcuff future legislatures with a three and a half percent cap. Yes, we do. That's exactly what we want, right, that's the point, all right. That is the point of putting the cap at three point five percent. It is to handcuff government from taking more of our money. That's the purpose. All right. Let me go over to Don. Hello, Don, welcome to the show. Hi Pete, thank you. I love your show. Thanks sir, welcome the citizens of all. I'm sorry about that. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry I hit a wrong key. Sorry, Don, go ahead, okay, well, first time caller. I love your show. Listen. I used to ride around a lot with my dad when he's in business, and he gave me these little vignettes and one of them was a son, if they weren't crooked, they wouldn't be there. Thank you, Don's dad. And then and then he would say, let me explain something to you. Whenever they say they're going to tax the rints, they always. Hit a yeah. Uh. This gets to one of the you know, Milton Friedman's economics theories and stuff, which is, like the people who are very wealthy, they have ways and they hire people to move their money around, put it into you know, all these different things so they don't get taxed. And that's what Yeah, and that's why, you know, people make this argument, No, the secret Warren Buffett secretary pays more in tax than Warren Buffett does. Well, yeah, because she's making she's making a salary and the government is taking out all of the taxes and social Security and Medicare and all of that stuff. Warren Buffett's quote income is coming from other vehicles. It's he's not drawing a salary from himself. Absolutely, And let me remind everybody that this is only going to be a happy meal a week. No, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And about ten years ago we had the last drought, they said we're only going to raise water rate until the drought's over. Well, the drought was over, and guess what, Oh, we need the money for expansion and repairs and stuff. They didn't, they didn't lower the rate. Right. Well. The classic example there is the what was it, the uh, the telecommunications tax or something like that, implemented on phone lines to fund the Spanish American War, and that thing stayed on the books for like a century. Yeah exactly. Yeah, don appreciate the call man, Hey, thank you all right, take it easy, yeah, appreciate it. It is the thing like government rarely gets shrunk, and when it does, people go ballistic. I mean, look at what happened when Doge came in. Look at the pushback in the outrage over the fraud that is being uncovered in all these different states, and everybody's all outraged, not that the fraud is being discovered, so we can now claw back some of that funding. But you've got I think it was Minnesota that passed a law that said you can't do any kind of undercover journalism or something like that. Another state was like, no audits, no audits. So any nonprofits that are getting government grants, that's the response that we get. They don't want to find waste, fraud, and abuse. And that makes me wonder, is that part of the reason why these programs exist? Right? Why are you doing this? If you know, like, even if it's twenty five percent out of a billion dollars, that's still two hundred fifty million dollars When you want that going to actual people that you claim to want to help with these programs and services. Seems to me like people who advocate for the creation of and funding for the services and programs would be the biggest fiscal hawks to try to uncover any waste or fraud or abuse. But it's the inverse, and you have to ask yourself, why, guys, I have nine more pieces of audio that I haven't even gotten to. Okay, so I will get to them in the next hour. We're not gonna I'm not. I didn't cut up all this audio for nothing. Okay, all right, let me go back to the phone lines here and talk with Mike. Hello, Mike, Welcome to the show. Hello Pete. Don't let me keep you away from your audio. Okay, I'll see you later. Give me just a little bit good SCUSI rus loved meeting your wife. She is the life whole. She was great, and uh it was a good evening. And uh I smell a butt coming. Oh well, okay, well there's no bot. She with the. Lifebuss do that. And in terms of talking about taxes, you know, I do think it is important in terms of giving I think a good perspective and maybe i'd argue a more active perspective into this situation that we pull back and look, when we're talking about taxes and tax revenue, it's a lot more than income taxes. Okay, you're correct that the Republicans are taking great glory at lowering our income taxes. But at the same time, all the people are listening to you and me, and they're listening in their trucks having lunch or whatever. If they go to an oil change, did it used to be taxed, but now it's taxed? They get their carbon pairs. Didn't used to be taxed? Now tax car washes? They do it home repair. If you get somebody to come over your h VAC, your plumber, did you can be taxed? Now? Are tax I did mention all of that. Mike I did mention that. In the well at the beginning of the air, I talked about how Democrats argued against applying the sales tax across industries that had UH that had enjoyed tax free services because yeah, because Democrats gave them carveouts when they were in the legislative power. So if you so, if you go see your an accountant, you're not taxed. If you go see your account if you go see this is particularly nice for me, go see an attorney, You're not taxed on that. But you are. But you are taxed. If you want to take your family to a museum, if you want to take if you want to go see a concert? If I so, if I buy a concert ticket, is that a sale. To They may call it a convenience fee, but yeah, to a certain extent, it's now a sales tax. No no, no, no, no, no no no, just just just me per just seeing the service. Is that if I buy a ticket to a concert, is that a sale? It's a you give money and you get something back from return. I guess that's a sale. It is a sale. In fact, they call it, they literally call it ticket sales. So why why why would a concert ticket? Now? Hang on, why should why should a concert ticket not be charged a sales tax? It depends on what your preference is, if you would. Rather, I'm asking you why should make the argument for why a concert ticket that we agree is a sale? Why a concert ticket should not be charged a sales tax like any other thing that you purchase. Well, like all sales taxes. One could argue that it is a regressive in nature, which it. Is, so get rid of all sales taxes. No, not all sales taxes. But why not when you pick and choose how you want the revenue to right? So I'm asking you you brought up the concert tickets as an example of a regressive tax. So I'm asking you why a ticket sales tax is somehow like worse than a sales tax on I don't know, prepared food, like why Like you're the one that gave the example. Why should the why should the concert tickets be exempt from sales taxes? Not necessarily that they should be, it's what. Well, you criticize Republicans for putting the sales tax on those sales. I do because I think they're making a choice to say, Look, yes, would prefer we would prefer tax really on income taxes, which benefits mostly higher income. That's not true, you make. No, the more income you make, the more you benefit. That's not true. The more income, the more income you make, the better your benefit is when when the income tax rate is lower. Mike. First off, okay, for Mike, first off, okay, First of all, you are aware of the standard deduction, right, right, and so do you. Want to back that out of the equation. First, it's about thirteen thousand dollars I believe at the state level, national levels, like twenty something thousand, right, So that first portion of your income is not tax The people who make more than that they are paying three and a half percent, or in this case right now, it's three point ninety nine percent. They're paying that on all of that additional income that they make. Right people at the lower end of the income scale are also paying that flat tax. So you want a marginal tax rate so you can charge more of an income tax on wealthier people. I would rather have my particular preference. And this is what it comes down to. It's not for against, it's the preference of what you want. My preference would be to lower the burden on things like oil changes and repairs and haircuts and movie theaters, to lower the burden on working fans companies that have to pay for that. And working families have to pay for everything. Everybody has to pay for everything. So why not just eliminate the sales tax? But you didn't want to eliminate the sales tax, Like, if it's really as regressive, if it is as regressive and damaging as you are asserting, then why would you not advocate for the elimination of all sales taxes instead? Some state something? I'm asking you, I'm asking you, why are you not interested in eliminating the sales taxes? And then just go to a higher income tax. You know that may be a preference to make. I don't know what it's doing. What's your preference, No, what's your preference. I would lower the sales tax. I don't know. I eliminate it. I think I would lower it because you need the income. If you're going to run a government, you got to have income coming from somewhere right, right, And so I think what we've done now, and I think what you've had over the last ten years. Again, this is through the Republican General Assembly. They're the ones that are running everything. They have made the decision we want to lower the income tax burden, yeah, and we want to raise the burden on those who pay. They haven't raised the burden. You know who's raised the sales tax burden the most? Did you vote for the transportation one sends sales tax? Yeah, who's raising the burden the most? Who's actually implementing the most regressive sales taxes? Here? It's not the state. In fact, the state came. In as I mentioned earlier also, and I got to leave it here, Mike, I appreciate the call the state. Also when the Republicans took over, they sunseted one of the Democrats temporary sales tax increases that they promised they would sunset, and then they did not. So the Republicans came in and reduced that sales tax first. They then broadened the base, say of transactions that the sales tax applies to like concert tickets, right, And then they began lowering the income tax. Why because it spurs economic growth. That's why they've been running budget surpluses for twelve years rager rather than structural billion dollar deficits under Democrats. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.