SC Senators To Vote On Compromise Budget

South Carolina Senators will get the chance to vote this week on a state budget that funds public education at its highest level ever, adds troopers to the roads, beefs up the budget for prisons and provides for enforcement of the state’s recently-passed immigration law.

Oh, the plan also pays down $200 million in debt.

This budget proposal – drafted by Senators Tom Davis and Greg Ryberg – will be offered as a “strike and insert” amendment to the current Senate Finance Committee budget this coming Tuesday.

If the amendment passes, the Finance budget drafted by Sen. Hugh Leatherman would be replaced.

Leatherman’s spending plan has been exposed in recent days as little more than a propaganda tool designed to inflict political damage on Gov. Mark Sanford over his position on accepting a certain percentage of federal “bureaucratic bailout” funds.

Sanford, meanwhile, has picked this “stimulus fight” as a means of gaining traction for a possible 2012 presidential run.

Getting screwed in the middle of all this back-and-forth?

Us.

Here’s the thing – no matter which version of the budget passes, South Carolina will spend more on government this year than in any previous year.

That’s ridiculous and inexcusable – and it’s also going to set us up for massive tax increases two years from now when the “bailout billions” are gone.

Lawmakers should use this opportunity to insist on numerous reforms – chief among them a spending/ revenue cap that will prevent government from ever growing faster than the taxpayers’ ability to pay for it.

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