Berger Calls on Cooper to Drop the Divisive Rhetoric and Sign the Bill

A bipartisan North Carolina Senate tentatively passed a roughly $23 billion state budget Tuesday that will help dramatically increase teacher pay and improve public education outcomes, rebuild communities devastated by Hurricane Matthew and provide major tax relief to strengthen the middle class and North Carolina’s economy.

These are priorities Gov. Roy Cooper claims to support, based on his own budget and public statements:

The bipartisan budget provides teachers an average 10 percent pay raise over two years.

The bipartisan budget cuts taxes to put money back into the pockets of middle-class families.

The bipartisan budget provides $100 million in relief to victims of Hurricane Matthew while saving more than $300 million for a rainy day.

Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) issued the following statement:

“No matter how many times Roy Cooper recycles his divisive, hyper-partisan talking points, his rhetoric simply doesn’t match reality. As many of his Democrat colleagues have already realized, this budget accomplishes the very same priorities Gov. Cooper campaigned on and claims to support. It’s time for the governor to prove his words are more than empty rhetoric, stop being a hypocrite and sign this budget when it hits his desk.”