2024 A Look Back: Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree award
This one goes out to the North Carolina General Assembly and Congress, but it will take a little explaining.
When Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina early on the morning of Sept. 27, 2024, the sun rose on unprecedented destruction, and it became immediately clear that the damage totals would be in the tens of billions of dollars — far beyond the ability of any local taxing authority to raise and spend.
An initial relief bill from the General Assembly was touted as a first step. The second bill, weeks later, failed to address the needs of the small businesses that power the regional economy. As legislators teed up a third bill, residents were worried that the bill wouldn’t help the people who needed it most, and they were right.
What we got was a “Christmas tree” bill, rolled out near the end of session and containing no actual immediate flood relief. It’s called a “Christmas tree” bill because many legislators were invited to hang their own particular ornament — i.e. funding requests for pet projects — upon it, in hopes that it would convince them to vote for it.
Rotten to its core, the bill’s major “accomplishment” was to strip powers from Democrats who’d beaten Republicans in the November General Election by winning the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and superintendent of public instruction and breaking the Republican-dominated General Assembly’s veto-proof supermajority.
It reminds us of Charlie Brown’s pathetic Christmas tree; legislators gussied it up with glass orbs, twinkly lights and popcorn-string garland and then tried to convince us — and themselves — that it was beautiful.
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Although the trio of bills did allocate roughly $1 billion for storm relief from the state’s estimated $9.1 billion revenue surplus, estimated damages remain north of $50 billion.
Legislators, however, offered a seemingly good explanation for the shortfall — they expected Congress to come through with a $100 billion funding package to bolster the nation’s storm response and make whole those who’d lost property in the storm and its associated flooding. Gov. Roy Cooper traveled to Washington, D.C., with a local delegation asking for $25 billion strictly for North Carolina.
But the funding bill advanced by Congress was another Christmas tree; tied to a government shutdown, the bill included all sorts of unrelated provisions meant to induce bipartisan support, just as the clock was running out. President-elect Donald Trump wanted changes to the debt ceiling, which is basically how much money the federal government, $37 trillion in debt already, could borrow. Billionaire Elon Musk voiced his disapproval of the bill, followed shortly thereafter by Trump. The bill was withdrawn, and a second bill was advanced but failed. Finally, hours before the shutdown deadline, a bill did pass; however, it contained no direct grant support to affected small businesses. North Carolina walked away with a paltry $9 billion, which will leave unmet needs in the $40 billion range.
In short, the whole three-month debacle resulted in the people of North Carolina not receiving the holiday gift they’d been promised. Instead, all we got was two ugly Christmas trees and, to reference another classic holiday movie, a set of pink bunny pajamas.
