Weirdest Vote Ever

On those rare occasions when South Carolina’s elected officials actually go on the record with one of their votes, the outcome is almost always predetermined.

It’s exceedingly uncommon for a vote at the S.C. State House to have any drama associated with it, and less common to see any alignment of the legislature that doesn’t involve a big-spending RINO-Democrat coalition imposing its will on a powerless fiscal conservative minority.

That’s why one particular vote from this week’s emergency session in Columbia totally caught us off guard. In fact, we’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it since we’ve been covering State House politics.

First, let’s set the stage …

Lawmakers are in Columbia this week to deal with a deteriorating revenue situation caused by years of excessive spending. Last week, they proposed an array of different “cuts” to the budget (actually, reductions in prior excess), and this week they’re voting on those reductions.

Needless to say, the whole process has been on “lockdown,” meaning that a select group of House and Senate budget writers decided beforehand what was going to happen, thus relegating the debate on the floor to what it typically is – a formality.

And while the leadership of the House of Representatives no doubt counted on different lawmakers offering amendments to their plan, our guess is that they never saw the first one coming.

Offered by former Minority Leader James Smith, the text of the amendment reads as follows:

General fund revenue collections and remaining estimates of general fund revenue collections for fiscal year 2008-2009 shall be used as the basis for making general fund appropriations for fiscal year 2009 unless the revenue estimates by the Board of Economic Advisors for fiscal year 2009 are lower. The state budget office must certify that the appropriations bill is in compliance with the requirements of this section before it may be given third reading in each house or ratified by the General Assembly.

Let us translate that for you … Smith is basically proposing that we not grow government next year.

Yeah … we couldn’t believe it either. A hardcore liberal Democrat proposing what amounts to a freeze in new spending? Surely we’re dreaming.

Actually, go ahead and pinch yourself because it happened – and fiscal conservatives like Nathan Ballentine, Eric Bedingfield, Kris Crawford, Shannon Erickson, Ben Hagood, Nikki Haley, Mick Mulvaney, Ted Pitts, Phillip Shoopman and others voted for Smith’s amendment – along with virtually all of the Democratic minority.

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

“It was an amendment on the floor that would reign in spending,” Rep. Haley told FITS. “I don’t know how you don’t vote for that.”

As far as we can tell, Smith is doing two things.

First, he’s officially announcing his campaign for Governor of South Carolina in 2010, which is probably why he had a videographer stationed up in the gallery to record the moment for future campaign commercials.

Second, he’s probably banking on the fact that there will be little to no revenue growth to speak of next year, which (let’s be honest) is about the only situation in which fiscal liberals are comfortable staking out common sense positions.

Regardless of all the underlying calculation, however, Smith’s move is encouraging.

As one representative told us, “if it takes a Democrat running for governor to get the current leadership to act in a fiscally responsible manner, I’m all for it.”

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