Hypocritical?

The co-chair of the President's budget deficit commission, Erskine Bowles, is from my state, North Carolina. Bowles has a day job. Although he will be retiring shortly, he is President of the Consolidated University of North Carolina, meaning that he is in charge of 16 state colleges and universities which have about 200,000. students. North Carolina, like other states, has been hit hard by the ongoing recession. This has reduced tax revenues and created massive budgeting problems for all NC state agencies, including state colleges and universities. Given that Bowles seems largely unconcerned by the possibility of massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare, you would think that he would be hard at work cutting deeply into the budgets of the colleges and universities he controls, making the politically unpalatable decisions that must be made. You might think that but you would be wrong. Despite the fact that the state constitution requires that the legislature "shall provide that the benefits of The University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense," Bowles has embarked upon massive tuition hikes at state colleges and universities.

By the way, I wish I could link to the "Erskine bowls" ad that Bowles ran during his race for the Senate in 2002, but alas, it is not available on youtube. The ad showed Erskine Bowles bowling. It was a feeble attempt to show that he had the common touch. It failed as did his Senate campaign.