news-record.com

State budget writers began their work this year in a $4.5 billion hole.

That's how far state revenues were projected to be short of expenses.

So it's tempting to cut them some slack for the light years-from-perfect spending plan approved last week and signed into law by Gov. Bev Perdue.

Then you look more closely at some of the sordid details and any sympathy swan dives right out of the window.

One such detail is the elimination of a college scholarship program called EARN (Education Access Reward North Carolina).

As Mark Binker reported in Monday's News & Record, the program was designed to enable low-income students to graduate from college debt-free. Students whose families earn up to twice the federal poverty level were eligible under its guidelines for up to $4,000 per year.

They will receive their final checks this fall semester. Then they're on their own.

The scholarships' elimination will save the state $16.2 million, but it will create a hardship for the neediest college students in the midst of a brutal economy. Locally, the cuts will affect more than 1,200 students, 731 at N.C. A&T and 524 at UNCG.

Some lawmakers say they simply did what they had to do. Money is tight, they say. In times like these you have to make tough choices. Yeah, right.

Like the tough choice they made to end EARN scholarships, which benefit North Carolina residents, while preserving a wasteful initiative that allows out-of-state students to pay in-state tuition on UNC campuses.

Since it primarily affects athletes, the initiative, in the end, winds up subsidizing athletics boosters such as the Rams Club at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Wolfpack Club at N.C. State -- at a cost of $10 million a year to taxpayers.

According to the most recent figures available, the Rams Club reported $47 million in assets, the Wolfpack Club, $77 million. (The definition of needy in this case must involve who needs a winning team the most.)

We dare any state lawmaker to even attempt to defend this pathetic excuse for priorities.