Politicians and Their Secret Spending
When I got to Columbia, I was shocked that your elected officials can spend your money in secret. That’s right… in secret.
Politicians could vote for extreme wasteful spending and insert pork barrel projects into the budget and you would never know. Not only is this irresponsible, but it breeds the kind of corruption that allows special interests to control government.
I’ve fought this sort of unethical behavior and I’ll continue to do so as your Representative.
I’m sure that you’ve heard about Senator Jim DeMint’s crusade against earmarks at the federal level. We had that same problem here in South Carolina too. Politicians could insert secret spending projects into the budget and most of us would never even know they were there. These projects were expanding our budgets and lacing them with needless projects requested by lobbyists and special interest groups. Last year I supported a historic rules change that makes any legislator who requests one of these projects put their name on the request. We can’t stop legislators from requesting these projects, but we can make it public and we can call them out for wasting your money.
Just two weeks ago I proudly voted for a roll call voting bill that puts nearly all votes “on the record.” Currently many votes can be taken on a voice vote where we all just yell Yea or Ney. It is virtually impossible to know how your legislator voted. We passed a rules change demanding more on the record votes and now we have passed a law making us to do the same.
Folks, we can’t create jobs and grow our economy until we can lower taxes and produce an environment adequate for economic success. And we can’t do that until we clean up government, hold down spending and make the politicians accountable.
I’ll continue fighting for transparency and accountability as long as I’m in Columbia.
Your Representative,
Keith Kelly
Comments
Got something to say?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
