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The 2023-2024 budget ballooned to an unprecedented $14.1 billion in general fund dollars, marking it as the largest budget in our state’s history. Despite promises of fiscal responsibility from “Republican” representatives, the budget saw a staggering 12.5 percent increase in year-over-year recurring general fund spending, further burdening hardworking taxpayers.
Even more alarming is the fact this exorbitant spending directly contradicted the core values of the Republican Party – and the campaign promise of nearly every member of the majority that promised voters fiscal reasonability.
Instead of reigning in government overreach and spending, the unused supermajority’s budget allocated millions of dollars to fund programs championed by the radical left, including divisive DEI initiatives, Planned Parenthood, and wasteful corporate welfare schemes that align with President Biden’s liberal agenda.
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Regrettably, the trend continues with the proposed 2024-2025 budget, which fails yet again to make any cuts to government agencies or programs. Instead, it perpetuates the reckless spending habits of the past, with every government entity receiving even more taxpayer dollars than before.
This rate of spending – and the utter disregard by Republicans in the General Assembly to reduce the size and scope of government – is unsustainable.
Furthermore, this budget shamelessly prioritizes Democrat policy objectives at the expense of conservative principles, and taxpayers. It lavishes funds on initiatives like the Office of Resilience (a.k.a. the Office of Climate Change), earmarks $50 million for Biden’s Green New Deal, squanders millions on Hollywood film companies and obscure art projects, and frivolously relocates 5 state agencies out of state-owned buildings and into expensive, privately owned office space. Additionally, it irresponsibly funnels taxpayer money into a slush fund aimed at enticing foreign companies, some with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, to our state.
The unwillingness of Republicans to defund the left’s policy priorities is unconscionable.
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RELATED | POLICY GROUP SEEKS SUSTAINABLE BUDGET
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Equally concerning is the neglect of law enforcement in this budget. Sheriff’s deputies are being shortchanged, with starting salaries falling well below those of first-year teachers. As conservatives, we should prioritize funding for law enforcement and infrastructure over frivolous pet projects and wasteful spending.
Fortunately, there is still time to rectify these misguided appropriations and use the power of the purse to steer our state budget towards conservative policy objectives. Members of the Freedom Caucus will advocate for measures to defund DEI programs at all state agencies; ban taxpayer-funded lobbying; redirect funds away from intermittent, wasteful, Green New Deal boondoggles and towards reliable energy production; support our county-level law enforcement; and to guarantee a further income tax cut in the next fiscal year by prudently preparing for the incoming recession.
As a Republican legislature, we have a duty to uphold the principles of fiscal responsibility and limited government that our constituents elected us to champion. It is imperative that we reject this bloated budget that neither decreases the size nor scope of government. In an environment marked by skyrocketing inflation and high costs due to profligate spending, this bill foists yet another undue burden on hardworking South Carolina taxpayers. Simply put: this budget is too big, the priorities are wrongheaded, and therefore must be reduced and realigned.
BANNER: Travis Bell Columbia SC Photographers
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS …
The South Carolina Freedom Caucus is a group of seventeen conservative members of the S.C. House of Representatives committed to “standing for our values, defending our Republic, and fighting for our kids future.”
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7 comments
Have the teachers whined about needing yet another annual double digit increase in pay? If you know what the job pays, don’t whine when you get hired and are forced to live off of $40,000 for a job that only requires you work 9 months out of the year.
Dang, life must be sad as hell if you are jealous of public school teachers.
Do better and you feel like such a nobody loser, my guy.
So in your benighted and perverted way of thinking, teachers are “suckers and losers” for choosing their
that pays such a low salary. I mean, “what’s in it for them?”
lol
The RNC just became Trump’s own personal ATM to cover his legal fees. That will be the RNC’s only mission going forward. The sensible Republicans are jumping ship left and right. Heck, Ken Buck was like “Fuck you MAGA nuts, I’m outta here next week!” Eroding even further the unless Republican majority.
Very soon, it’s just going to be MAGA nuts as a hapless minority in Congress. They couldn’t run a lemonade stand without it turning into a childish brawl. Their policies and positions are HUGELY unpopular with a vast majority of voters.
The Freedumb KKKaucus has been a boon to our enemies in Russia and China for the last several years. Doing nothing but obstruction, while continuously trying to bring the government to a stand still and killing funding to help our allies put Putin down for good.
Expect the Freedumb KKKaucuses across the South and in Congress to ramp up their crazy, anti-American behavior in the coming days. The Republican Party is dead.
Ken Buck really screwed what’s left of the GQP.
Who needs Democrats, when Republicans are more than happy to piss away their wasted Congressional majority!
At least Ken really stuck it to that trailer-trash, ho-bag, Lauren Boebert. Couldn’t happen to a worse group of garbage humans ;-)
Ah yes, FitsNews’s allegiance to the Koch Brothers remains in tact, I see. It’s the “no taxes for the wealthy” mantra that got this country and this state in the mess we’re in now. Why should the struggling middle class get stuck with their tax bills? Trickle down, aka Reaganomics was the beginning of the end of middle-class upward mobility in the US. It doesn’t work. Duh. But yes, let’s just listen to a group created solely to keep the Koch’s from paying their fair share. No thank you. Been there, couldn’t afford the t-shirt, and am done with the propaganda from groups like the “Freedom” caucus. They mean freedom for them to screw the middle and lower class. Their grand plan is to convert public education into “pay-for-education” which will dumb down the US population and further aid our decline into a second world country.
No common sense in the state house. Spending money like no tomorrow and don’t dare question them, they know better than you. Aren’t citizens tired of being the bank for liberal SC legislators and their ignorant spending? I am. But people just keep pulling the R vote……