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With the budget conference committee’s recent adoption of the final budget report, both chambers are now scheduled to return for a single legislative day to vote on this year’s annual budget. Historically, the conference committee includes pork barrel spending (also known as earmarks) in the final budget which the general assembly votes up or down on, but this year, local project earmarks were stripped from the product on which we will be voting.
Instead, the conference committee opted for creating a special review committee that has not been named or scheduled to meet, to deal with this year’s earmarks, leaving open the question of what legislative vehicle will carry that piece of the budget, when, and what the total earmarks look like and to which entities they are allocated.
That ambiguity begs the question of the constitutionality of this budget’s passage, eventual implementation, and oversight of money expended through local earmarks due to the lack of transparency.
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Article III, Section 18 of the South Carolina Constitution states that ‘no Bill or Joint Resolution shall have the force of law’ until it has been read three times, on three separate days, in each chamber. With only one floor day currently scheduled, and with leadership reportedly still undecided on whether all or part of this budget will move as a bill or as a joint resolution, it is not clear how the three-readings-on-three-days requirement will be honored.
The choice of vehicle matters beyond procedure. Article IV, Section 21 ties the Governor’s line-item veto specifically to bills ‘appropriating money.’ If any piece of this budget moves as a joint resolution rather than an appropriations bill, it raises a real question about the governor’s constitutional authority to line item veto. We do not believe legislative leadership should be able to sidestep that check simply by choosing a different label for the same spending bill, especially since our legislature already experiences significant power over both the appropriation of money.
There is another danger here, as well. Our Republican candidate for governor, attorney general Alan Wilson, has rightly stated that he will use the line item veto to cut wasteful pork from the budget when he is elected governor. If a precedent is set for earmarks being appropriated via resolution rather than within the budget bill, then Governor Wilson will not have the ability to use the line item veto.
That precedent cannot be allowed.
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These questions deserve answers before a vote. Irrespective of the constitutional ambiguity surrounding this budget, the final product delivered to the General Assembly from the committee once again increases spending during a time of increasing affordability issues for hardworking taxpayers.
Total state spending is on track to grow by roughly 7.9 percent, from $41 billion in the current fiscal year to a projected $44.5 billion in FY2026-27, according to the South Carolina Policy Council’s analysis of the Governor’s executive budget figures. (The final conference committee’s all-funds total has not yet been made public and may differ slightly.)
Spending growth of that magnitude, on top of an unresolved process question, is exactly the kind of thing the General Assembly should not be jamming through in a single day.
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We are calling on legislative leadership to publicly state, before August 11, exactly which legislative vehicle will carry every remaining piece of this budget, and to honor the three-reading requirement in full — even if that means scheduling more than one legislative day.
South Carolina taxpayers are entitled to a budget process that follows the constitution they live under.
In light of budget writers once again increasing state spending in excess of population growth plus inflation and because of the constitutionally questionable nature of this process, the members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus will be voting no on the conference report.
We encourage budget writers in the future to prioritize both spending cuts and adherence to our state’s constitution before attempting to ram through another spending package that doesn’t put South Carolinians first.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS…
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The South Carolina Freedom Caucus is a coalition of state legislators advocating for constitutional government, fiscal restraint, and limiting the growth of state spending. This column originally appeared on the group’s Substack page.
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