NC lawmakers are sending households a $335 check. It’s the wrong way to offer COVID relief.

Republicans took control of the General Assembly in 2011 with a promise to cut taxes and spending. They’ve been a little too good at that.

But there are times – say, when a pandemic throws hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians out of work and has them struggling to pay their mortgage and rent – that the government needs to spend money both wisely and generously. Republican lawmakers are not very good at that. Spending is not their thing.

Their clumsiness was on full display last week as N.C. lawmakers doled out the money remaining from what the state received in federal pandemic relief funding, money that must be spent by Dec. 30. The bill approved Thursday and sent includes some sensible and necessary spending on school funding, broadband access and PPE, but nearly half of the funds – $440 million – are being essentially thrown to the wind. The bill gives each North Carolina household with parents of children 17 and younger a $335 stimulus check. The payments will go automatically to parents who file taxes. Those who don’t have to file a tax return can apply for the grant.

It’s a wonderful idea for Republicans during an election year, but it won’t concentrate the help on those who need it the most. Republicans claim the checks – called “extra credit grants” – will offset the cost of remote learning at home. Senate leader Phil Berger, though, admitted he doesn’t care how the money is spent. He just wants stressed parents to get a little something. Maybe, he suggested, they could use some of the money to pay a babysitter and go out to dinner (if they dare).

Thanks, but people facing eviction are not hiring babysitters for a night on the town. And the election-year checks will largely miss low-income working parents who don’t earn enough to have to file a state income tax return. Many of those parents may not be aware of the grant.

Alexandra Sirota, director of the Budget & Tax Center at the N.C. Justice Center, said Republican lawmakers don’t seem to grasp how deep the financial crisis is. “The scale of need is daunting,” she said. “More than a million North Carolina households are at risk of eviction this year.”

Meanwhile, outside budget analysts estimate that about $123 million will go to households with incomes in the top 20 percent, $100,000 and above. That money would be better spent on the unemployed and families struggling with housing and child care costs.

Of course, the Republican majority again took no action on the big-ticket requests in Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget proposal: Medicaid expansion, and bonuses for teachers, principals, school support staff and community college employees.

The continuing holdout on Medicaid expansion is even more galling amid a pandemic. But North Carolina’s Republican leaders can’t get past the fact that Medicaid expansion will require the state to spend a little more to get a lot more from the federal government. Thirty-eight states have taken the deal.

Scattering checks to parents what Berger sees as returning to the people the money that came from them, a kind of state tax refund via the CARES Act. But what is really needed is a thoughtful targeting of spending where it will go furthest and do the most good. That’s how most people want their tax dollars spent.

Cooper Friday he will sign the bill. He had little choice given the good portions of the spending bill and the deadline to spend the money. But he did so reluctantly, saying in a statement, “Legislators should have done more to expand Medicaid, support small businesses, pay our educators, assist with rent and utilities relief and further help unemployed North Carolinians.”

So the federal relief is allocated, some of it well spent, but too much of it misspent.

Correction: An earlier version of this editorial said there were no income limits on eligibility for the checks. Eligibility is limited to those who qualify for a federal child tax credit. The credit begins to phase out at $200,000 of modified adjusted gross income and $400,000 for married couples filing jointly.

This story was originally published September 5, 2020 at 12:00 AM with the headline "NC lawmakers are sending households a $335 check. It’s the wrong way to offer COVID relief.."