South Carolina state legislators recently approved a $14.7 billion budget that addresses a variety of priorities including infrastructure improvements, disaster relief, and salary increases for teachers, state employees, and even the legislators themselves.
Upon reconvening at the State House, the lawmakers assessed the final budget as prepared by a Conference Committee consisting of three Senators and three Representatives, which managed compromises over the previous week. Notably, despite an additional $1 billion, this year’s budget does not allocate funds for local community projects.
“Halting earmarks is a challenging task… nearly all of you are worried about the lack of earmarks, but it must be done… it has spiraled out of control,” stated Senator Harvey Peeler (R – Cherokee).
Another topic in the budget are lawmaker pay raises. Governor Henry McMaster said it is justified that lawmakers will be getting a raise because it is used for in-district expense, which means they will receive more money to spend on legislative duties.
“Inflation is there and there are legitimate expenses that they need to have in these offices, and they’ve estimated that’s what they need,” McMaster said.
But not everyone agreed with this. Before the Senate’s vote Senator Wes Climer (R – York) said the way this was brought up was unconstitutional. He asked the chamber to vote against the budget because he believed they needed to discuss this further.
“Regardless of whether you believe it is merited, inflation adjustments, so on and so forth in this session, you cannot possibly believe that this is the right way to do it. “
Representative Joe White (R – Newberry) agreed and urged the house members to vote no.
“Think about your constituents and think about your taxpayers, and vote this up or down, based on what you believe right now.”
Also, in the House several members of the extremely conservative group called the freedom caucus said the state needs to spend less money on bridges and more on a tax cut.
Governor Henry McMaster will have the chance to veto parts of the new budget, but as of now it is set to go into effect on July 1st.
