Would South Carolina's economy be better off today if we'd added 3,540 small businesses over the past four years (like Georgia) instead of losing the 3,629 small businesses we lost over that same time period?

Would our economy be better off today if our net employment growth over the past four years had been 12.7 percent (like Florida's) as opposed to the negative 2 percent we experienced?

Would our personal income levels be higher? Would the state have more revenue on hand to fund core needs such as education or Medicaid?

Or, speaking to the 144,000 South Carolinians currently looking for work, wouldn't your quality of life be better if you had a job and didn't have to consider moving to a state like Georgia where the unemployment rate is a full 2 percentage points lower than ours?

I think the answer to each of these questions is a resounding "yes."

Unfortunately, unlike what they're experiencing in Georgia (where the income tax rate is 6 percent) or Florida (where there is no income tax), job growth and small business growth here in South Carolina continue to be held in check by what is effectively the highest income tax in the Southeast and the fifth-highest income tax in the nation.

Last week Commerce Secretary Bob Faith and I joined some friends in Greenville for the groundbreaking of the new auto research park -- a huge economic development project that includes corporate partners such as BMW, IBM and Microsoft. Given that the research park is in effect planting a seed for our state in an emerging, high-tech marketplace, my question is this: How do we improve the underlying soil conditions for economic activity in South Carolina so that we're maximizing opportunity not only for the BMW's and Microsoft's of the world, but also filtering that opportunity down to the thousands of small businesses that form the backbone of our economy?

Our "Jobs and Economic Growth" plan does that. Along with a host of other pro-business ideas -- ranging from worker's compensation reform to health insurance cost containment to small business regulatory reforms -- our plan would most improve the underlying business climate in our state by immediately reducing the income tax rate by 15 percent, from 7 percent to 5.9 percent.

Why is income tax relief so important to our state's economic future? In addition to the impact it has on growing small businesses, I'll give you three more reasons:

Income tax relief is a key building block in creating jobs. During the 1990s, states that lowered their income tax rates experienced three times the job growth compared to states that raised income taxes.

Income tax relief will stimulate the economic activity. This is clearly something we're seeing at the national level as President Bush's income tax cuts helped spur our nation's economy to a 7.2 percent growth rate this past quarter -- the highest increase on record since the mid-1980s.

Income tax relief will raise personal income levels. From 1960 to 1993, residents in states with low or no income tax saw personal income levels increase 25 percent faster than those living in states with high income tax rates.

Also, states that cut income taxes during the 1990s now enjoy 41 percent higher personal income levels than states that raised income taxes. Unfortunately, South Carolina's personal income level still is 80 percent of the national average.

Soon, we'll present a spending plan that addresses the short-term budget crisis we're up against -- a budget that balances immediate needs with long-term reforms designed to grow jobs, expand economic activity and raise income levels.

South Carolina is at an economic crossroads. We can either follow the lead of states such as New Mexico, where their Democratic governor is in the process of lowering the income tax rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent to create jobs, or we can continue the policy of doing nothing that has only held us back as a state.

I'd ask for your help, namely by calling your legislators and encouraging them to support our plan. Together, we can keep our state home to this as well as future generations of hard-working South Carolinians.