What Will ‘Obamacare’ Mean for You?

THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS ABOUT TO BE A BIG PART OF YOUR WORLD The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, has already begun to take effect on the nation’s taxpayers and economy. Over the next year, as The Nerve reports today, South Carolina employers will be faced with serious – and [...]

Bureaucratic Middle Men in State Government

  FOR GOVERNMENT, IT TAKES A LOT OF MONEY TO SPEND MONEY South Carolina’s state budget now tops $24 billion – a staggering sum (and just to put that in perspective, remember: a billion is a thousand millions – and state government takes 24 of those out of the private economy for just one year). [...]

The State Budget: What Are You Buying?

   HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR PURCHASES THIS YEAR? The state budget isn’t a foregone conclusion, and for the most part it’s not some legal obligation – like a mortgage payment – that can’t be altered or reduced at will. The state budget is a transaction in which the citizens pay for certain services, [...]

What’s South Carolina’s Biggest Employer?

 IT’S NOT WHAT POLITICIANS TELL YOU What industry would you guess is the biggest employer in South Carolina? Listening to State House politicians, you might think the answer is one company, Boeing. Or you might think tourism is the number one employer in the state. In reality, government is the single largest employer in South [...]

Does S.C. “Live within Its Means”?

 TECHNICALLY, YES. IN EVERY OTHER WAY, NO. Twenty-four billion is a large number. No one has ever seen 24 billion dollars all together, so it’s difficult to imagine an amount of money that large. But apparently, according to South Carolina’s lawmakers, it takes this mind-bending amount of money to run the state for one year.  [...]

Another Useless Attempt to Cap Spending

IT’S WON’T CAP SPENDING IF GOVERNMENT GETS TO KEEP THE MONEY Yet another legislative session is about to pass in which there was some talk about controlling state spending, but nothing done. Back in February, House members introduced a bill that aimed to limit state spending by capping General Fund (GF) appropriations. Specifically the bill [...]

The State Budget Shouldn’t Take This Long

WHY THE BUDGET TAKES HALF A YEAR TO PASS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT It has become an almost yearly tradition for the South Carolina General Assembly to use its time so inefficiently that important legislation – including the state budget – doesn’t pass before session concludes on the first Thursday in June. With [...]

How to Fund Road Maintenance

(WITHOUT RAISING TAXES) How do lawmakers propose to deal with the fact that South Carolina’s roads and bridges are in suboptimal shape? The governing assumption behind most answers to this question (including one Senate proposal supported by Senate Finance chairman Hugh Leatherman) seems to be that, in order to pay for road and bridge repair, [...]

The Answer to Road Funding: Tax Hikes?

THE LATEST PROPOSAL TO FIX OUR ROADS ASSUMES STATE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY Last week, H.3412 was placed on the Senate calendar for consideration. Originally the bill would have merely shifted revenue from the sales tax of motor vehicles – currently dedicated in part to the Education Improvement Act fund (EIA) – to the [...]

Senate Finance Budget: What to Keep an Eye On

LOTS OF PUBLIC MONEY, VERY LITTLE PUBLIC INPUT Budget debate will begin on the Senate floor today. The budget was passed out of committee May 3, and made publicly available May 8. The usual practice in the legislature allows members to have the budget for one week (three legislative days) for review. However, a vote [...]