“Draconian?”

Draconian: The word is defined as “harsh,” with synonyms including “brutal, cruel, drastic, exorbitant, extreme, heavy-handed, oppressive, rough, severe or strict.”

And yes, it’s already being applied to the budget “cuts” experienced by the State of South Carolina.

In fact, as far as we can tell, here’s the first mainstream media usage of a word you’re going to be hearing a LOT of over the next few years ….

From La Junior Socialista (a.k.a. The Myrtle Beach Sun News):

Over the past few years, (Gov. Mark Sanford) teamed up with legislators to make the sales tax the leading revenue source for state government. Because consumers have curtailed their spending, sales-tax collections have fallen drastically, resulting in draconian budget cuts to most state and state-supported programs.

And there it is.

Now don’t get us wrong, Sanford was an idiot for going along with (and ultimately trying to take some credit for) the ridiculous legislative tax policy of the past few years, but he wasn’t driving that train, people.

That was House Speaker Bobby Harrell and his merry band of knee jerkers in the S.C. House of Representatives.

Anyway, instead of actually cutting taxes and getting our state’s economy moving (for once), lawmakers swapped ‘em out from one pocket to the other and called it “tax relief.” Which is pretty much what they’ve been doing for decades.

Meanwhile, they grew government by more than 40% (or $2 billion) over the previous four years, meaning that all this talk of “draconian” cuts is ridiculous … well, unless lawmakers are willing to reverse their previous statements and admit that they wasted money when they should have been funding core government services.

Look, people … the state budget was $5 billion in 2004. And even after all these cuts, it’s still at $6.3 billion.

Last time we checked, that’s a pretty decent-sized increase over a four-year period.

There’s no doubt that the economy is slowing down and that South Carolina is in for some incredibly difficult budget times, but let’s try and be honest about this.

We nowhere near hitting “draconian” yet … although get used to politicians saying that we have.

Oh, and the moment that there’s even a nickel of surplus taxpayer money in the coffers again, get used to hearing these same mindless buffoons talk about how we need to “restore funding to pre-2008 levels.”

It’s the big government spin cycle, people, and expect it to kick into high gear when lawmakers reconvene in January.