In a news release reported by The Insider today, Gov. Roy Cooper took another swipe at the General Assembly’s budget proposal that he vetoed.
“We desperately need more good teachers and getting retired veteran teachers to go back into the classroom is helpful,” Cooper said in a news release. “But the best way to have a good teacher in every classroom is better teacher pay and more investment in education instead of corporate tax cuts.”
But as we’ve documented several times before, Cooper doesn’t oppose cutting taxes for corporations, or even giving corporations taxpayer handouts. He’s all in favor of them, when they benefit him.
Indeed, Cooper’s latest statement pretending to be against corporate tax cuts comes literally two days after his office issued a press release bragging about authorizing $4.4 million in taxpayer handouts to ABB, Inc. – a global robotics and electrification corporation with more than $8.5 billion in gross profit last year.
Indeed, Cooper recently boasted about doling out nearly $70 million in corporate tax breaks and giveaways just in the last three months, as pointed out by the Locke Foundation’s Jon Sanders.
In 2018, Cooper tallied up $195 million in giveaways to hand-picked corporations.
When Cooper says he’s against “corporate tax cuts,” he’s lying. What he really means is that he’s against cutting taxes across the board for businesses. He is more than happy to grant tax cuts – and taxpayer handouts – to select corporations in a game of blatant cronyism.
This enables Cooper to issue press releases touting his “job creation,” while more importantly creating a culture in which he offers political privileges to major corporations of his choosing. This practice of course invites corruption and pay to play opportunities – an arrangement Cooper is no stranger to given the revelations of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline incident.
