The Beaufort Gazette: Lawmakers short schools, health care

South Carolina lawmakers worked through the night Wednesday to reach a compromise on the state's $5.3 billion budget, but they may have walked away from a mound of federal money for health care for the needy.

President George Bush's tax-cut plan helped supply a temporary fix for health care for the state's elderly and poor who had faced the loss of nursing home beds, home health services and prescription drugs. Instead, the president's bailout program allowed them to come away with a Medicaid program that has $212 million more in its budget than last year. That will forestall drastic cuts this year, but it still is a stop-gap measure. What will happen next year when little if any federal dollars are available.

A proposal to increase the state's cigarette tax by 53 cents a pack to 60 cents was a workable plan to accomplish several goals:

Raise $171 million for Medicaid, which could have been used as a match for another $400 million in federal funds to improve health care;

Fully fund the State Department of Education budget to Education Finance Act requirements; and

Potentially help reduce use of cigarettes by teenagers, not to mention potentially reducing incidents of lung disease.

Having endured $400 million in budget cuts, South Carolina lawmakers need to increase taxes. As this newspaper has opined before, cigarettes take a toll in health for South Carolinians as they do for residents of any state. South Carolinians, though, pay the fourth lowest cigarette tax in the nation -- 7 cents a pack. The cigarette tax is lower only in Kentucky and Virginia (3 cents per pack) and North Carolina (5 cents). The other 46 states have a higher tax, though Georgia's at 12 cents isn't much higher.

Increasing the tax to the national average could have helped South Carolina offset a potential $500 million revenue deficit. Even raising the tax to the national average would put South Carolina 45 percent behind the $1.10 tax California charges.

Raising the tax also could have helped offset the $500 per student deficit in the state education budget. The proposed budget would allot a base student cost of $1,701 per student. The fiscal 2002-03 budget spends $1,770 per student after midyear budget cuts. Earlier this year the Board of Economic Advisors told lawmakers that $2,201 per student would be required under the EFA. The cigarette tax could have offset the additional $270 million needed to meet requirements of the EFA, which lawmakers approved years ago.

Lawmakers evidently think it is more important to protect smokers and their misguided vow to hold the line on state taxes than to live up to a promise to educate children and provide health care to the elderly and poor.

In their misguided attempt, they shift the burden of taxation to the county and municipal level, where all property owners, not just the smokers, will pay higher taxes.