South Carolina lawmakers to focus on jobs
Lawmakers return to Columbia Tuesday to face a deepening budget crisis and record unemployment.
Job creation will be the main focus during the session that opens at noon Tuesday, according to area lawmakers. But also high on the agenda will be taking a knife to a budget that’s already had $1.5 billion hacked from it in the past 18 months.
“What we’ve got to do is be one of the most business-friendly states in the country,” said Sen. Lee Bright, R-Roebuck.
Bright said cutting taxes and easing regulations that choke businesses — especially small ones — would go a long way to pump up hiring and slash an unemployment rate that reached a state record 12.3 percent in November.
State Rep. Keith Kelly, R-Woodruff, said aggressive recruitment and extending incentives packages like the one that lured Boeing to the state also would help put more South Carolinians to work.
“Boeing is going to be a great catalyst,” Kelly said. “If we can bring in the satellite vendors like we did with BMW, it will truly be good for the entire state. BMW is a shining example of what can happen with public-private partnerships.”
Dealing with falling revenues will take center stage from the opening gavel. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Cooper said Thursday that about 4.4 percent will have to come off the top as lawmakers try to deal with a shortfall projected at a half billion dollars.
Rep. Harold Mitchell, D-Spartanburg, said lawmakers would have to take a “serious look” at where the money is going and prioritize spending to truly fix the budget.
“Both chambers are going to have to put partisan politics aside,” Mitchell said. “There has to be a serious discussion on any number of key issues.”
Sen. Shane Martin, R-Spartanburg, said adding a spending limit to the mix would help level out the peaks and valleys of the financial booms and busts. Several proposals were introduced last year, but none have gained traction.
“I campaigned on spending limits, and we’ve got a spending-limits bill still sitting in committee,” Martin said. “With unemployment high, tax collections are going to continue to be down. We need to have some buffers in place. We can’t keep having piecemeal solutions. It’s not going to get better until we fix the problems.”
Act 388, the sales tax for property tax swap implemented in 2007, capped spending increases for school districts and local governments. Martin said state lawmakers should practice what they preached.
“If it’s good enough for the state to enact spending limits on local governments, it should be good enough to enact spending limits on the state,” he said.
‘Affirming sovereignty’
The Legislature also will have to deal with some unfinished business from last year. One of the items leftover in the Senate is a 10th Amendment resolution “to affirm South Carolina’s sovereignty.”
“We’ve got to try to protect the Constitution from the federal government,” said Bright, one of the sponsors of the resolution.
To that end, Bright said he wants to amend the resolution to allow South Carolina to opt out of any health care reform plan approved by Congress.
“I want to get an up or down vote on it and then let the people decide,” Bright said. “We’re up for election in 2012, and the people can decide then whether they want to ride it out or get their 30 pieces of silver from the federal government every now and then.”
‘Waste of time’
Lawmakers also will have to decide what to do about Gov. Mark Sanford, whose admitted affair cost him his marriage and, most likely, his political future.
The House, which decided against impeachment last month, is poised to pass a censure resolution, perhaps as early as Wednesday. It could get sticky when it goes to the Senate.
Sen. Jake Knotts, a longtime Sanford adversary, said the censure is merely a slap on the wrist and he wants a new investigation into Sanford’s trips to Argentina to visit his mistress. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell said if the censure resolution couldn’t be voted on quickly, it would be a “waste of time.”
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