Limiting the Growth of Government

One of the core, bedrock principles of the conservative philosophy I share with my constituents is that we should limit the size of government. That means letting people spend their own hard-earned dollars and ensuring government serves the people by getting out of our way.

As the House readies for the start of Budget Week on Monday, March 14, the House took a concrete step to ensure our state government doesn’t grow faster than your wallet. We passed key legislation limiting how much the state can spend.

This legislation still has a long way to go, especially considering that this is the eighth time the House Republicans have ushered such a bill through since 1994. None of them have ever made it out of the state Senate.

This bill is a critical part of our conservative commitment to restrain the growth of government in the face of a growing number of formulas that force spending. If we don’t follow a path of fiscal responsibility when times are good, we will be much worse off when we have economic trouble. We are witnessing that right now as we are forced to slash budgets artificially inflated by tax revenues collected during good times.

The legislation passed this week uses February 15, 2010 as the base and restricts future growth to the LESSER of 6 percent growth, or population growth plus the Consumer Price Index (a common measure of inflation). In addition, the bill allows the General Assembly to declare an emergency and suspend the restrictions with a vote of two-thirds of those present. According to the most recent report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30 states operate under spending or revenue limits.

The bill also creates a “Spending Limits Reserve Fund,” and requires funds in excess of the spending limit to be appropriated for replenishing the General Reserve Fund, temporary tax reductions, infrastructure, school buildings, school buses, and then expenses for natural disasters.

These spending limits are reasonable and give the General Assembly plenty of room to maneuver should there be a major crisis – like another Hurricane Hugo or terrorist attack – that would require us to marshal our state’s resources to respond.
But it also ensures that when state tax revenues start expanding again, it will either be refunded to the people who earned it, or pay for crucial infrastructure, education, and public safety projects that will help expand our economy.

As state tax revenues have fallen over the last several years, South Carolina has made a concerted effort to cut the size of government rather than increase taxes on citizens – as was done in several of our neighboring states. That process will continue next week as we debate the budget.

In future years, I hope these spending limits will ensure budget cuts will not be as severe as those we have witnessed over the past three years. The bill will arrive in the Senate next week.

As always, thank you for the privilege of serving you in Columbia. If I can ever be of assistance to you, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with the rest of the General Assembly, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 864-527-7685 in Greenville or connect with me on Facebook.

This week, the South Carolina House voted to consolidate more of our state’s administrative power in the hands of the Governor this afternoon by approving three major restructuring bills.
Restructuring our state government has been something the House Republicans have struggled with for more than a decade. With the results of November’s elections still fresh in people’s minds, my Republican colleagues hope this is the year these reforms are finally enacted.

These three restructuring bills are yet another piece of our conservative reform agenda that we have approved this year – joining tort reform, the Higher Education Transparency Act, Voter ID, charter school reform, the Repeal Amendment, and roll call voting.

The first piece of legislation approved Wednesday moves fourteen divisions of the Budget and Control Board to a new department: general services, employee insurance programs, the State Information Technology Division, procurement services, veterans’ affairs, Office of Executive Policy, and the state energy office, among others. These offices largely provide administrative or inter-governmental services, rather than providing services directly to the people of South Carolina.

Legislation creating a Department of Administration was approved by the House in 2004, 2008, and 2009.
The Department of Administration will give our Governor more power over the executive branch of government that she heads. This bill is a major first step in strengthening our state’s chief executive.

Whether we enact the next two reforms that we approved this week is entirely up to you – the voter.

The House voted for a constitutional amendment that will give voters the right to decide if the Governor and Lieutenant Governor should run on the same ticket. A second amendment let voters decide if the state Superintendent of Education should be appointed by the governor and not elected.

The few, nearly all Democrat, opponents of these amendments claimed we were taking power away from the people. That could not be further from the truth. In this country, all power is vested in the people, who give that power to the government. In this case, the voters of our state will have the final say, not the General Assembly. If these are approved by the Senate, they will appear on the ballot in November 2012.

Roughly half of the state’s general fund budget pays for K-12 Education, making it important that the state Superintendent of Education has the same agenda as the Governor. Anybody who pays attention to politics knows that education is a key issue in every governor’s race – despite the fact that the governor has virtually no control over our state’s public schools. This needs to be fixed.

The lieutenant governor is currently elected separately from the governor. The person “one heart beat” away from the governor’s mansion could be a different party, or have an entirely different agenda. Given the lack of overall power in the lieutenant governor’s office, it only makes sense that they run as a ticket rather than separately.

The bottom line about the House’s action this week is this: There are good people who disagree about whether our Constitutional Officers should be appointed by the governor – as many of them are in other states – or elected by the people. The legislation supported by the House Republicans this week only gives the ultimate power to decide that question to the people. That’s the right thing to do, and the voters will settle this debate once and for all.

The House Republicans have ushered through similar resolutions on various constitutional officers during every session since 2004. None of them have ever been approved by the state Senate.

There is only one more week before the full House debates the budget, and we have a number of other agenda items on the House calendar – including the Taxpayer Fairness Act and the House Republicans’ seventh attempt at enacting a state spending limit.

As always, thank you for the privilege of serving you in Columbia. If I can ever be of assistance to you, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with the rest of the General Assembly, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 803-212-6795 in Columbia or 864-527-7685 in Greenville. For the most up to date information and news from the State House, be sure to follow me on Facebook or listen to my weekly “Legislative Report” every Friday at 6:05 PM on WMUU 94.5 FM. If you miss the program on Friday, each program is archived here.