As you know, next year a new legislative long session will begin.
John,
Happy New Year!!
As you know, this year a new legislative long session will begin. And the General Assembly’s leadership and legislature has already expressed ambitious plans for 2025.
If they’re going to make 2025 better than 2024, there are some public policy best practices they will need to observe.
One of our first recommendations is for lawmakers to stop investing millions of your tax dollars in wasteful corporate welfare programs. I know I mentioned this a few times last year, but these programs consistently deliver less than half the jobs they promise.
And this won’t shock you, but another piece of politically-tied corporate welfare just failed.
That is just over 25% of the jobs they committed to bringing to Wake County. And it’s even more evidence for getting rid of these programs going forward.
History keeps repeating itself and proving that this type of government favoritism simply doesn’t work.
All it does is grant an unfair benefit to select corporations at the expense of taxpayers like you and I. So, although there are many policy recommendations the General Assembly can take up to make 2025 successful, one of the simplest and most direct is getting out of the corporate welfare game.
Esse quam videri,
Brooke Medina
VP of Communications
John Locke Foundation
On December 17th, the US House appropriation committee unveiled a 1,547 page continuing resolution and disaster recovery bill
It would have continued funding the government and provided support for multiple states suffering from disasters in 2024
How it would have funded disaster recovery
The bill gave a lump sum of $110 BILLION for disaster recovery
However, instead of giving it to each state (you know so they can spend it in a way that makes sense), this gave money to different federal agencies!
Agriculture: $30.8 BILLION
FEMA: $29 BILLION
HUD: $12 BILLION
DOT: $8.1 BILLION
Small Business Administration: $2.2 BILLION
Department of Commerce: $1.5 BILLION
Health and Human Services: $250 MILLION
This original bill was a failure because instead of just providing disaster relief to those who needed it, it lumped it in with the politically controversial funding bill…
$100 billion in disaster recovery was eventually passed in the continuing resolution (with NC set to receive $9 billion in aid)
You can read the relevant section of the U.S. Constitution here.
An Article V Convention is a vehicle that allows states to propose amendments
If two-thirds of the states propose an amendment via convention, then Congress “shall” call a convention
If you are wondering, this has never happened before
And why are they calling for one?
Because US Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton established that states themselves cannot place term limits on federal officials, the General Assembly is trying to get Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on federal officials
So will we have an Article V Convention?
Well, we’re not that close yet. Nineteen states have passed resolutions calling for a convention to “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, impose fiscal restraints, and place term limits on federal officials.”
If we include all calls for an Article V Convention we are up to 28 states, and it is impossible to have a convention WITHOUT the support of some progressive or moderate states
What would actually happen if a convention were called?
Congress takes on a “ministerial role” but according to the Congressional Research Service would have some role including setting the time, place, and nature of the event
However either Congress or the States would have to decide
How states will be represented
How many delegates each state can send
Whether the Territories or District of Columbia would be represented
And could this turn into a “runaway convention”
An Article V Convention is unlikely to be populated by a disciplined cadre of actors with a strict agenda beyond what their legislators sent them to do, which could devolve into a runaway convention
But there is an important guard against this: 38 states will have to ratify any amendments proposed by the convention, which will make it hard for any outlandish proposals to “sneak” through
The Highway Patrol has been made a cabinet level agency (it was previously an agency under the Department of Public Safety)
As a result, it is the role of the governor to appoint the head of the Highway Patrol, subject to the advice and consent of the Senate
Stein and Cooper are arguing that the General Assembly’s move to withdraw this appointment power for State Highway Patrol violates the state’s interpretation of separation of powers as laid out in McCrory v. Berger (2016)
Translation?
By the legislature predetermining who would be the commander of this new agency and preventing the governor from the opportunity to nominate a new head of the agency, this seems to violate the state’s separation of powers provision.
