If Gov. Beverly Perdue and liberal activists want to know why their Edu-scare campaign against the Republican-led General Assembly hasn’t worked, they need only to consider the insight of essayist Kahil Gibran, who once wrote that “an exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.”

It was undeniably true that, because Republican lawmakers decided last year to balance North Carolina’s budget without a tax increase, their budget spent less money than Perdue had proposed. And it was true that this lower spending level brought with it a lower number of government jobs.

What was also true, however, is that the differences between the two budgets — both in spending levels and government positions — were modest. The GOP budget spent about 2 percent less than the governor’s General Fund budget, and about 1 percent less on education.

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