NC House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, released details of the proposed state budget on Tuesday evening.

If the North Carolina budget released by the GOP-led House last night were to become law, everyone would suffer. Here’s just a few of the cuts:

• $2 billion in total cuts, including reductions in teen pregnancy prevention programs and adoption assistance and the elimination of a successful prison alternative program that actually saves the state money.
• A 15 percent cut to the university system, which its leaders say would be devastating.
• 8.8 percent cuts to schools that would include all teachers’ assistants in second-and third-grade classrooms, cuts to other administration and maintenance staffs and transportation. This is on top of a $304 million discretionary reduction built into the budget. That means the real size of the cut to public schools is 13.2 percent, nearly $1 billion.
• The Smart Start pre-kindergarten program would lose about $37 million; More at Four would be cut by $30 million, losing space for more than 2,600 children.
• Funding for senior centers would be reduced by 47 percent.
• Community health grants would be cut by 23 percent. 
• The state Department of Health and Human Services would have to cut its budget by almost 11 percent.
• Mental health services would lose $37 million at a time when the US Justice Department is investigating its lack of ability to care for people.
• Cuts to reimbursement rates for physicians in the state’s health insurance program for low-income children.
• $58 million in increased court fees.
• Less funding for domestic violence services.
• Laying off 40 members of the State Capitol Police force.

That’s just some of the bad news. Greg Borom, who does advocacy with Children First/Communities in Schools of Buncombe County, ticked off some of the cuts this morning.

“Anything you care about in health, education or children’s services is at risk,” he said.

“There isn’t a classroom in the state that would be left untouched by the GOP’s job-killing budget,” Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt said in a statement to WRAL in Raleigh. “From preschools to elementary schools to community colleges and universities, this proposal jeopardizes the very future of our state.”

Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, said lawmakers need to “stop trying to please the tea party.”

There’s been no talk about raising revenues. It seems not to matter if people would die in the streets because of these cuts — and be assured, some will.

It’s a cruel and punative budget proposal. The people who put together this budget obviously care nothing for the people of North Carolina.