SC Spending Orgy Has Consequences
… BUT STATE LAWMAKERS HAVEN’T LEARNED A THING
FITSNews - April 14, 2008 - Over the last three years, South Carolina’s “Republican” legislature grew government by an astonishing 41% - a rate that was twice as fast as the national average. Not surprisingly, that massive investment didn’t do jack sh*t for South Carolina. Our schools still suck, our people are still poor and our economy is still in the toilet.
Now, after choosing to invest millions of dollars in pig festivals and a bunch of other similarly useless crap over the last three years, revenues in South Carolina are plummeting like a rock. Oh, and the first thing these morons want to cut from the budget now that their spending orgy has caught up with them is … you guessed it, economic development.
According to the most recent version of the state budget, legislators are cutting $12 million in tourism advertising, $7 million from an economic development fund at the Department of Commerce and $2.5 million for dredging Charleston Harbor, which is already sucking wind thanks to the brainless anti-leadership of our State Ports Authority.
Of course what’s the one thing legislators are refusing to cut? The $18.5 million devoted to their pet project slush fund …
Comments
By ron on April 15th, 2008 at 6:50 am
fits: you’re right that the overwhelming majority of sc assemblymen NEED TO GO. They apparently learned nothing from their budget fiasco following the dot.com bubble bursting early in this decade. If i recall correctly, Gov Sanford inherited an unconstitutional budget deficit when he was elected. These lawmakers, ignoring their oaths of office to protect and defend the constitution, ran 2-3 years of unconstitutional budget deficits in a row while borrowing from almost every “trust fund in state government”. Subsequently they have chosen to ignore the pleadings from the Governor and Comptroller General and even over rode almost all of his vetos which were an attempt to restore fiscal sanity in Columbia. As you say so eloquently in this blogg piece, they still haven’t learned. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I WILL NOT VOTE FOR ANY INCUMBENTS ON JUNE 10TH.
By ron on April 15th, 2008 at 7:00 am
In my opinion, one of the most idiotic things the sc lawmakers have done was to shift the school operations funding from a local revenue stream to an increase in the state sales tax. They were forewarned that the sales tax is totally unreliable in difficult economic times. Rather than listening to reason, they listend to their beach buddies that wanted a “tax break” on their luxury homes. As you know, this resulted in a monumental “tax shift” from the have’s to the have nots in our state. Now the real estate industry, the chambers of commerce, the Strom Thurmond Institute (the institute published numerous documents warning of the dangers of this tax shift) etc are singing the blues over the “flim flam sales tax scam” (phrase appropriately coined by Col. Joseph Kress of the Dorchster Taxpayers Associaiton).
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