Special Interests
Every group that “rates” lawmakers is a Columbia special-interest group. Agree with their special interest, get an A. Disagree and get an F. And be assured that for every issue – more taxes or less taxes, pro-life or pro-choice, right to carry guns or no guns – there is a special-interest group.
I don’t represent Columbia special interests. I don’t need their money, and I don’t want their favors. I represent the people in southern Spartanburg County. District 35 includes all or some of the schools in districts 4, 5 and 6.
In my first term, I voted against taking our tax dollars from Woodruff, Byrnes and Dorman high schools and R.D. Anderson Applied Technology Center and giving them to private schools, thereby lessening the educational opportunities for our children. I voted for a mandatory school bus replacement cycle to ensure reliable transportation. And I voted to override the governor’s veto so that autistic children are now covered by their parents’ health insurance.
Being pro-life, I voted to ensure a woman views an ultrasound with her doctor before an abortion. As a fiscal conservative, I voted to abolish taxes on groceries and reduce the S.C. income tax rate while increasing funds for LIFE and Palmetto Fellows scholarships, using existing money, no new tax.
I stood with the governor in demanding a restructuring of the state Department of Transportation and wasteful spending. And I stood with him again in support of changes to our burdensome workers’ compensation laws.
I supported more money for law enforcement to protect us – the criminal gang prevention legislation – and I voted to sustain the governor’s veto on collecting DNA upon arrest, not conviction, because it violates constitutional privacy rights that belong to you, me and our children. One group told me it supports DNA collection of every child at birth for the government’s use. Ever hear of Big Brother?
Some special-interest groups say legislators spent too much money even though taxes were cut and $218 million returned to taxpayers. What they don’t say is that $63 million was dedicated to other post-employment benefits for state workers due to an accounting change by the General Accounting Standards Board. Oh, and the board’s change affected all 50 states, not just South Carolina.
What they don’t say is that each year the Legislature is required to pass a balanced budget, this year being no exception, or that over the past 10 years South Carolina’s rate of spending growth has averaged less than 3 percent. Nonetheless, I supported H.3295, a spending limit bill passed by the House this year even though a recent Board of Economic Advisors study concluded that South Carolina’s effective income tax rate is 31st in the nation. (See for yourself: www.bcb.sc.gov/BCB/bea/State
IndividualIncomeTax
ComparisonsforTaxYear2005.pdf). South Carolina is a good place to live and a good place to do business.
Still other special-interest groups say the Legislature elected a liberal Democrat judge to the Supreme Court. They can’t get it right. Judges are nonpartisan and are strict constructionists, meaning they follow the intent of laws passed by the Legislature, or activists, meaning they find new rights in the constitution, like abortion and a stepparent’s right to your child. Justice Don Beatty, a Spartanburg County resident, has served as a judge since 1995 and is widely respected in the legal community as a strict constructionist jurist and a very able, capable and hardworking judge.
Another group is appalled that I support the Second Amendment guaranteeing law-abiding citizens’ right to carry, own and possess firearms. And, for sure, there is a group that dislikes us hunters.
The next time you receive one of those “ratings of lawmakers,” ask yourself which organization did the rating and what its agenda is. I’m not answerable to any Columbia special-interest group, folks. I’m answerable to you.
Keith Kelly of Woodruff represents District 35 in the S.C. House of Representatives.
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