TAXPAYERS MIGHT AS WELL BE FLUSHING IT …
|| By FITSNEWS || The S.C. House of Representatives will begin debate this month on the Palmetto State’s FY 2015-16 budget. And yes, it once again will be the biggest budget in state history … by a country mile.
How big? We don’t have a number just yet, but the executive budget submitted earlier this year by “conservative” S.C. governor Nikki Haley has set the bar at $25.7 billion. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s a whopping $590 million more than lawmakers appropriated last spring for the current fiscal year – which ends on June 30.
And that budget was a billion dollars bigger than the one from the previous year … which was a billion dollars bigger than the one from the year before that … and so on … and so on …
Yet these politicians whine about having a “revenue problem?” And say they need to raise taxes to pay for it? Please …
So … how was Haley’s budget received?
Not well … at least not by those watching out for taxpayers’ bottom line.
“Two of the most pressing issues in South Carolina today are school funding/ reform and the state’s broken road funding system,” an analysis of Haley’s budget prepared by the S.C. Policy Council, a libertarian-leaning think tank. “Haley has attempted to address both of these problems in more or less the same way: By dumping more money into them.”
That’s sad … but not surprising seeing as Haley vetoed less than one-tenth of one percent of last year’s status quo spending plan. She has also adopted fiscally liberal positions on government-run education funding and spending on government-subsidized health care.
And this one time “Tea Partier” wants to lecture lawmakers about not being “fiscally conservative?” Please …
Still we expect lawmakers to outdo Haley. How come? Well, the top two legislative budget writers (S.C. House ways and means chairman Brian White and Senate president/ finance chairman Hugh Leatherman) are both more liberal than the governor … and they wield tremendous influence over lemming-like rank-and-file members, who care only about getting reelected and carving some pork for themselves.
Which means we could be looking at a $26 billion spending plan by the time it’s all said and done …
What a waste …
South Carolina’s economy – never all that hot to begin with – will never consistently create jobs and raise incomes if government keeps sucking up all the revenue growth. It’s just that simple … as our state’s recent history has proven.
But rather than embracing bold tax relief in lieu of new spending, our status quo politicians (Haley included) are pursuing the demonstrably failed fiscal policy of chasing good money after bad.
It’s been said doing the same thing with the expectation of a different result is the “definition of insanity,” but Palmetto politicians aren’t insane … they know they can get away with it.
12 comments
In the end, Haley, the collector/user of the states biggest bag of dicks, put them all together like one giant Voltron dick with which to anally penetrate the tax herd.
Her and all her pol buddies win, every time.
Keep re-electing them SC…keep re-electing them.
And they are going to pass a bond bill that will total somewhere between $500 million and $750 million dollars. It is figured differently, so it does not show up. It is a blowout give away.
Bonds and shorter term borrowing would show up on a 10 year fiscal plan. If not, SC taxpayers are in deep trouble.
I think the yearly payment is in the budget, but the debt does not go into the budget number, does it?
Mmmmm … bond payments, probably so. BUT those of us who believe they understand numbers, are seldom told what the real costs of those bonds are without the entire long term payment schedules.
FYI: The real cost of g’ment bond issues is the combined Total Payments. A short look into which brokers and which promoters get the bond business and who they donate to often reveals “hidden” costs that show up in other areas of a g’ment budget.
One can always tell when states are running on overdrive with underwhelming results:
*Consider the state population of ten years ago compared to today.
*And then consider the the number of state owned cars and pickup trucks ten years ago compared to today.
*And now considere the number of state employees ten years ago compared to today.
If the state population growth is reasonable, then the government growth might also be … Or Not.
This kind of simple, non-common core math will tell the tail….
All too often government budgeteers pay attention to these numbers and ramp up salary caps and quotas, hiring schedules and all sorts of expensive details … and the state taxpayers will suffer, count on that.
So predictable. I read Volvo and Jaguar may be coming to SC. Of course, this info leaked from the people trying to pass a $42 billion dollar gas tax and a $500 million dollar bond bill.
They leak info about the carrot, so they can pass the stick (tax).
SC taxpayer is going to pay, pay, pay.
A 2.35% increase. Wow! The nerve of those legislators!
It always goes up, never down…after 5 years of increases you’re talking about almost 12%…go ask people working outside government if they’ve seen a 12% pay increase in the last 5 years.
You know what you’ll find? THEY ACTUALLY MAKE LESS:
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/south-carolina/
So don’t be an asshole, k? I know that’s asking a lot. But maybe taking people more, who are making less, is-shall we say, cruel?
I’ve got a novel idea, why not shrink the budget each year 2.35%? That doesn’t seem to be asking much.
* taking=taxing
2.35% is roughly commensurate with annual inflation and yes, state employees have taken pay cuts through low/no cost of living adjustments. Furthermore, many are doing the work that 2+ people used to do because of staff reductions. As for the rest of your jibberish… WTF are you talking about?