State lawmakers are back in Raleigh for the 2026 legislative session and in at least one important way, it will be a gathering of historic note. Thanks to his stunning defeat in the March primary, this will be Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger’s 16th and final go-round running the General Assembly’s upper house. Only one other Senate leader in state history — Berger’s immediate predecessor, the late Marc Basnight, who held the job for 20 years — served longer.
Interestingly and unfortunately, however, unlike Basnight, a conservative-leaning Outer Banks restauranteur and businessman who evolved and grew during his two decades in leadership to become a formidable champion of, among several laudable causes, higher education and environmental protection, the Phil Berger of today is pretty much the same guy who rose to power after the 2010 “Tea Party” election.
As NC Newsline reported, Berger highlighted this disappointing fact in a recent pre-session news release in which he reiterated his opposition to pausing scheduled regressive income tax cuts — cuts that even his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have effectively acknowledged will do great damage to core state structures and services if they are allowed to take effect.
“Our policy success is largely grounded on the continuing exercise of discipline on two fronts — tax reduction and spending restraint,” Berger said. He went on to restate the tired old right-wing claim that unless North Carolina remains on this track, it will find itself losing out to other states in the “never-ending competition…for economic growth, job creation, and a better future for our people.”
What “policy success” Berger might have in mind — other than the tax and spending cuts themselves and the relentless gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics, and far right social agenda items he and his Republican colleagues have pursued — is not at all evident.
Yes, North Carolina has continued to grow over the last decade-and-a-half — mostly in urban and suburban Piedmont communities in which Republican politicians struggle — but to attribute that fact to GOP tax and spending cuts that chiefly benefit the wealthy and out-of-state corporations strains credulity. If anything, it’s more accurate to say that North Carolina has continued to grow despite those cuts.
North Carolina was already a fast-growing magnet for new residents and businesses long before (and immediately prior) to the Republican legislative takeover. What’s more, it was a state in which new and aspiring residents were often attracted not just by already moderate taxes, but also by diverse, rapidly improving, and award-winning K-12 and higher education systems and the graduates they produced, a comparatively mild climate and appealing natural environment, a comparative lack of sprawl and congestion and a forward-looking commitment in many locales to social progress.
Now, of course, as Berger winds up in Senate years, many of these erstwhile attractions are no more.
Where once North Carolina’s K-12 schools were an upward trending national model and envy, and an inspiring magnet for new teachers, relentless tax and spending cuts authored by Berger and approved by his handpicked state Supreme Court have left them threadbare, eviscerated and demoralized. Today, both per-student funding and funding effort are at or near the bottom of national rankings.
Likewise, North Carolina’s once proud public universities now hemorrhage talented faculty members and administrators to systems that are capable of paying competitive salaries and willing to respect the tradition of academic freedom.
And whereas North Carolina once sought to pursue a hopeful model for intelligently marrying economic and population growth with a commitment to coping with climate change and preserving much of the natural environment that helped make it so appealing in the first place, today, environmental regulation of any kind, as well as funding for the programs that make it work, are anathema to Berger and his fellow Republican lawmakers.
And the list goes on.
Be it health care access, public health and disease prevention, early childhood education, services to people with mental health needs and developmental disabilities, the criminal and civil justice systems, disaster relief, affordable housing, unemployment insurance, workplace safety, consumer protection, scientific research, economic development, an adequately funded and independent election system, or numerous other critical common good services that make a broadly middle class society healthy and sustainable, North Carolina is demonstrably worse off than it was 16 years ago thanks in large measure to the tax policies Berger and his colleagues have championed.
And sadly, while Berger may seek to portray these destructive cuts as somehow emblematic of “discipline,” the truth is the precise opposite. Genuine discipline in public financing involves not just spending restraint that avoids waste, but also a commitment to sustained investment and shared sacrifice that asks the well-off to pay their fair share, elevates the common good, and promotes a rising tide that lifts all boats.
As he prepares to walk off into the sunset, it’s a sad commentary that one of the most powerful politicians in North Carolina history continues to mistake one of the state’s biggest problems for a solution.
Senior contributor and award-winning journalist Rob Schofield authors regular commentaries and hosts the 'News & Views' weekly radio show/podcast. Republished from NC Newsline.
