SC Government Bigger, More Intrusive, Dependent of Federal Dollars
Ashley Landess
May 2009
The General Assembly just passed the second-largest budget in state history and made South Carolina’s government bigger, more intrusive and so dependent upon federal dollars that more than a third of South Carolina’s government is controlled out of Washington.
In addition, for the first time in at least three decades the House and Senate passed their budget without a conference committee to iron out differences. Legislative leaders in both bodies spoke as one voice when they committed almost a billion dollars in annualizations (one-time money for recurring programs), grabbed more power from the already-weak executive branch and took capital from taxpayers and businesses to dole it out to select companies and industries.
Despite opposition from a small but vocal minority of taxpayer advocates in the legislature, lawmakers spent more than a billion dollars in one-time federal stimulus money, a decision economist Art Laffer says will cost South Carolina as many as 35,000 jobs. Lawmakers ignored the economists –even worse, they ignored the citizens.
The public has been clear it is tired of legislators’ wasteful spending and secretive practices.
It is pretty clear the legislature is not concerned with public opinion. This budget spends tax dollars on boondoggles like hydrogen research, which even the liberal Obama administration wouldn’t fund because it is unproven and unlikely to succeed.
There is tax money for private charities and companies and even local pet projects like the Clemson Spring Dairy Festival. All while our citizens are seeing their incomes fall, their savings dwindle and even many of their jobs disappear.
Rather than give struggling citizens tax relief to invest in their families, legislators took money directly out of the hands of private businesses and spent it on more government programs – they even raised fees on some small business owners to create a special “Capitol police force.”
Individual taxpayers, families and small businesses are the ones paying for the waste and arrogance of the South Carolina General Assembly. This state’s economy is dependent upon entrepreneurs who identify a consumer demand and create a business to meet it. Free-market democracy is the only thing that has ever created American economic prosperity, and is the only thing that ever will. But this state budget is as far from that as it has ever been.
It is hard to believe that it is necessary to defend free market capitalism in America, and in South Carolina. But as this budget debate proved, our legislative leaders are
convinced that they can drive the economy better from the Statehouse than individuals can in the free market. South Carolinians are going to have to decide what they believe and step up to defend it. Ultimately, democracy cannot exist without the free market – without capitalism there is no equal opportunity. Without equal opportunity, there can be no true equality. Without equality, there is no freedom. And as history has taught us over and over, without freedom there will always be tyranny.
Nothing in the foregoing should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder passage of any legislation. Copyright 2009. South Carolina Policy Council Education Foundation, 1323 Pendleton Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29201. |
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